The Ancients: Confucius

all right good evening ladies and gentlemen um thank you very much you found our new location what a 50 feet to the right amazing amazing how confusing that can be someone just told me that the New York Times had an article on Confucianism today so I've not seen that but apparently is a very topical and as I'll mention China is resurrecting that's Confucian tradition quite actively for various reasons that will that we'll talk about as we go on I was trying to think about how to try and just encapsulate Confucianism and the ethos of Confucianism and so I thought probably this hasn't occurred to you you probably haven't thought this but on the off-chance the idea that the ethical character of our political leaders matters if this thought has perhaps crossed your mind at any point you have a core piece of the Confucian philosophy which says the quality of your world the quality of your life is determined by your character and the character of the people that you surround yourself with it is by far the single most humanistic philosophy you can find it really emphasizes the human at the center of everything character the qualities the morals the education music the poetry the beauty but it always comes back to the individual and the person for as I said because it does matter sometimes just personally and if you think nationally or imperially as Confucius was thinking in ancient China it then it matters on a political grand national stage so this is this is really the core of it and we'll turn to this again and again but I've started last month with Zoroastrianism advisedly because I wanted to show it at least give you a hint the influence that zero astron ism has had on Christianity and and the development of our culture generally because we basically missed that we quite often overlook that huge influence because it's been lost in time and translation and for various reasons what is even less well-known is the the Zoroastrian tradition coming from the Persians is shared roots with the Vedic tradition that developed separately into Hinduism this is why it's the indo-european language family is because there's a common root there that are that many of the words that we use in all the European languages go back to their shared in the Sanskrit Vedic languages there they're a common root that like I said goes back thousands of years what this means is Christianity roughly a billion and a half people in the world Islam another billion ish people and Hinduism billion another billion ish people so three to four billion people in this world live in civilizations that were shaped however distantly by this common Vedic linguistic and sort of metaphysical outlook that you see both in Hinduism and Christianity this is so strong by the way that you can find these strange books where they say oh well Jesus must have traveled to India because the residences the concepts are so close to things that you see both in Hinduism in the story of Krishna and you get an siddhartha gautama and the development of buddhism that there must be some connection and so they figure oh he must have traveled there what this is extraordinarily unlikely to say the least however the trade was going on the the the lane the link cultural intermixing had been going on for a thousand years by the time Jesus shows up so of course there are resonances very powerful resonances between concepts you get in Christianity and concepts you get in Islam and concepts that you get in Hinduism and all the related cultural movements not in Confucianism this is a different thing entirely almost entirely without metaphysics we'll talk about this not entirely but the emphasis is so slight compared with the Vedic traditions as as if to be almost non-existent they're not non-existent but very close relatively speaking 1.5 billion ish people in the world have as their primary cultural influence Confucianism it's a totally different cultural intellectual artistic political heritage of unbelievable vastness by the way the Chinese are the great literate Society of all time they've been writing everything down and filing it carefully for thousands and thousands of years they invented the filing cabinet like to file bones that they were writing on before paper was invented I mean it is amazing that goes all the way back way back amazing society and so this incredible intellectual tradition is this river that comes to us in the name of Confucianism but don't think of this as one philosopher who is passing down a set of ideas this is this is a wave or a river like you know Christianity or like monotheism is just this vast world spanning intellectual like I said artistic ethical tradition that embraces every aspect of life at every level in the Confucian societies which are like I said roughly 1.5 1.7 billion people in the world another way to think of this is the Vedic tradition and the Confucian tradition pretty much take care of about 5-6 of the world's population these are the great cultural rivers that flow all kinds of variations within that but if you look for the roots this is what you're going to find so Confucian but himself lived you know fifth fourth 552 479 BC see those seem to be pretty good dates for him we don't have a lot of other good information on him as family is theoretically known we have some biographical details but you know how eyes with all these founders of ancient things sketchy lots of myths and stuff has been built up around him as time goes on but what is clear is he was desperate to be a Kurt here or or or a advisor or a political worker in the families of the nobility and he lived a period of great political instability that followed a period of relative stability so one of the elements of his works that will come back over and over and over again is it used to be good let's go back and do what worked then he consistently presents himself and we'll talk about the main works associated with him as a conservator as a student of the past attempting to preserve the past and bring it into the present to make the present better this is this is really core this is his this is his central plan and he said what made the past so much better than the present and the foreseeable future was the nobility and the character of the rulers is a very clear concept the idea was they were gentlemen of the the symbol the Chinese symbol for four gentlemen but really its closest translation in English is something like gentlemen scholar that view that the the the the character of the people particularly the leaders was superior if so facto the society was superior and so how do we get back to those kinds of superior individuals well his answer is make your bed really it's the old cliche Confucius said you want to be a great Imperial leader make your bed this is the beginning the center of everything and you'll see it's the second quote there and he says there is only one way to gain confidence for one's Authority the man is not trusted by his friends you will not have the confidence of those above him there's along one way to be trusted by one's friends if a man is not affectionate towards his parents he will not be trusted by his friends there's only one way to be affectionate towards one's parents if a man looking into his own heart is not true to himself he will not be affectionate towards his parents there is only one way for a man to be true to himself he's not know what is good he cannot be true to himself I mean there's all I mean the volume of work on Confucianism is astounding and you know it just is virtually infinite and his own works are sort of large which we'll look at but I this pyramid that he builds is just the core of it first note the humanness he does not invoke gods metaphysical principles eternal truths all changing rules and look at the goals there's only one date one way to gain confidence for one's authority a very human desire how do how do i influence the world well people have to trust you believe in you put confidence in right this isn't how do I achieve eternal salvation this isn't how do I you know become a perfect spirit and embodied in the eternal truces of Socratic sublime eternity right it's not how do I build a pyramid in Egypt and into myself so when I pass through the Otherworld I'll be wealthy and have thousands of slaves to serve me there it's no how do I get on at work I have things I want to do how do i do then let's assume they're good things right they just don't this core human impulse says well the man is not trusted by his friends he will not have confidence of those about him friends friends comes up over and over to one of the most pleasing things about reading the works of Confucianism is that he keeps talking about friends and brothers not so much sisters unfortunately women sorry you know once again as great as Confucian is we're still a few thousand years away from the big breakthrough with the women but you know if we make it sort of gender neutral it really is much more fun but but I have to just say yeah that women in ancient China yeah sorry ah but that's but thick but it's queer ideas still apply we need we need not let that limit us because you know he talks about the family friends parents obviously children sons daughters rah I mean it's this again it's just this really conceivable is it there's a famous passage in the New Testament where Jesus says if you don't hate your family you don't hate your parents you cannot come to me go away you must hate your family well that's yeah right asked I mean I mean we're not that we don't have those feelings anyway occasionally right but but to promote that Confucius like me just the often know if you can't learn to love your family how you gonna learn to love a stranger in some ways it's a very simple concept so friends and then parents right if a man has not affectionate towards his parents he will not be trusted by his friends and there's only one way to be affectionate towards one's parents if a man looked into his own heart ah so here we come it always is going to come back to this by the way look into his own art and is not true to himself he will not be affectionate towards his parents this is very he believes Confucianism believes and promotes the concept that if you're really honest with yourself you'll be a decent human being that this various kinds of self-deception that when the lesser angels of our nature triumph over our better angels of our nature when we're when we're less than we should be but basically he thinks we should be great you should be great if you're not great look in your heart talk to your friends look to your parents I get this incredibly humane he doesn't say flagellate yourself or fast or or you know leave everything and wander in the wilderness talk to your father always father again sorry but you know talk to your father and mother talk to your friends look into your own heart make your damn bed you want to change the world you have to change your own heart to be the best version of yourself that you can be so so this extraordinary emphasis on the individual is pervasive what's funny is we've received confusion is this oppressive right very rigid social system that emphasizes hierarchical repression of everybody's individuality I mean it depends on what you mean by this Confucius thoughts and we'll look at this in the passage on music in a moment that well if we learn to live with harmony with the people around us we'll have a much better chance of flourishing and expressing our true self and one of the core principles here is human beings belong in groups and we damn well better learn how to live together here's my best plan for doing that and this plan by the way comes from the zu dynasty or from ancient times from the preceding centuries if you think look individualism that to be me I have to piss everybody off and run away and move across the country or you know just do my own thing all that those messages that we get this is this is fundamentally opposed to Confucius he says really you think you're gonna be healthier better off without friends without community without family you really think that he's very suspicious of this concept in fact he's dismissive of it he thinks it's incredibly inhuman look around how people live first thing we do of course if we flee our families as we try to set up new families right it is it is we go well this family isn't working I'll better go get another family now that would have been tricky to pull off an ancient China but even if you believe that notice the same rules apply okay you've now chosen your family as you choose your friends by the way this one reason Confucianism emphasizes the choice of friends is because he recognized that that is where you have freedom and so the choice of your friend really does reflect on you don't choose your parents don't choose your station it really does reflect on who you are so okay you've moved now you have a new family you're setting about community that you've chosen great what rules are you going to apply I think if you read Confucianism to be hard to find better ones mutual respect accountability self-evaluation look into your own heart there's only one way for a man to be true to himself if he does not know what is good he cannot be true to himself so the concept of gentleman here is matched to the concept of scholar this notion of gentleman is really gentleman scholar because how do you know what's good you have to work at it you have to study you have to look at what the ancients did you have to look at the rites and the poetry and the music because that's how you're going to discover what is good and right it's not just gonna happen the common examples are he compares people to Jade ruff Jade has the promise of beauty has the capacity for beauty but it needs to be worked with knowledge and skill and care for its true beauty to shine through and so right at the heart of this is study I mean he really really really believes that you improve your life through reflection and study and so and that's just one passage from the central harmony which is from the book of rights which and I'll talk about his different works briefly but the concept here is that you can improve your life through understanding how people lived well before and modeling their behavior we don't have to invent it new if you've ever looked back in your life and thought oh if I only knew now or I've only knew then what I know now Wow Confucius is like yes other people lived before they wrote things down you can know now what you want to if you want to try if you're willing to really learn and study you have this opportunity you don't have to make every single mistake for yourself although he was perfectly aware this is a good way to learn you actually promoted this type of learning we'll talk about that but he's like look it's not new people aren't new we've been around for a long time even in Confucius this time he's like look we've been around for a long time we have all these records we know what they did we have their histories we have their songs we have their rights let's just do what worked how crazy is that and so this is the score focus on just being people being human you can't miss it you can just open your eyes randomly open Confucius to practically any page and it'll be a a love song or a beautiful poem or a discussion about somebody in a family or a question about how a ruler should treat his people and it's all very concrete and understandable and not metaphysical practically in any way there is a little bit of metaphysics which I'll mention but it is really just this core idea a second example here and this is from the book of songs or the book of poetry depend all these titles get translated different ways so it can be very confusing that's why I want to go through them and he says music rises from the human heart when emotions are touched they are expressed and sound and when the sounds take definite forms we have music therefore music of peaceful and prosperous countries quiet enjoys this joyous and the government is orderly so this is the another aspect of this is everything is tied together that your music your feeling towards music how you experience music is an expression of the orderliness of your character but notice what the goal here is one music peace prosperity joy order that's why I love this passage it gets all the good words what did the Confucians want they wanted peace prosperity quiet joy order music this is the list of the good not sacrifice suffering self-denial right look and it's a phenomenal notion music is just one expression of this model of the good that is the goal to live in a world that is orderly and prosper it and quiet and joyous and filled with music and peaceful not a terrible goal I would say I noticed it so the goal here there's nothing about there there's no we're not going someplace else we're not gonna be someplace else it's not about an afterlife or another world or the diamond Valley or anything right you in Confucius money it's always the notion is you've arrived at your final destination so fix it up it's it's you're there here you are wherever you go there you are so there you are so you may as well start fixing yourself up and fixing the place around you change the wallpaper you know do some exercises make your bed and see how it goes it's a profoundly unrest turn concept who would say not to put too fine a mark on it Hinduism of course is you know we're always you're always on this endless cycle in Hinduism you're always something you're always going someplace else in Hinduism you're about to be something else somewhere else sometime else some transformation is coming and that's what you should worry about in in Christianity of course this is theoretically all about the afterlife this is just some temporary transient place and you got Islam very similarly all these rules submit that the name Islam submit and worry about what comes later even zero astron ISM battle of good and evil some great manichaean struggle of absolute ideals with this inconceivable universe spanning God Confucius is like music is nice we like music let's talk about music and for the longest time the book that is called the songs or the poems sitting out of the translation people didn't take it seriously because it's a collection of songs and poems and we know that can't be serious philosophy is not about songs we know this right on all the philosophy classes I've ever taken we never got to sing anything which i think is a real big failing right we should have done some more singing there's some great songs in here by the way but no you're not supposed to sing in philosophy because philosophy is not about the emotions but think about a weird weird world that is when philosophy supposedly an exploration of the concept of being human in the world does not include a lot about the emotions well that's sort of ridiculous human beings have emotions and yet several thousand years of philosophy with exceptions our emphasis has been very heavily away from that Confucius like no emotions mad look music rises from the human heart that's where it comes that's why it moves us and so when your music is in harmony and we're both moved together all this is good this is order this is joy this is what we we want harmonious relations so they developed a whole philosophy by the way Chinese music is different from Western music because it's developed on this theory of the harmonious and intermingling of of music to produce peaceful orderly joyous States that's that is the concept if you know the tradition of western music one of things that held it up for a bit was the notion you could only have one voice it had to be monophonic because there's only one god so you can't have all these chords and dissonance and all this because that's no doesn't matter what people like doesn't matter what you want to hear of course the troubadours and stuff following these rules at all because you're like hey no we'd like this other stuff but but official music for the longest time was monophonic or these it was supposed to be because there's only one voice of God then eventually they said well let's have some more and then pretty soon you've got to beYOU see him as everything's beautiful but but you know that but that core impulse was not to say hey music that's right there at the center of it so half of least half of Confucianism is simply this unbelievable emphasis on the individual and the character of the individual as shaping the quality of your life and the lives of those around you this is not crazy you could even argue this is named very great insight the power that he had and the power of his followers mentioned and many others was to actually put this into action it's not that people hadn't thought this before or since but over the centuries following Confucius not a lot of success in his life by the way sort of a failed failed ish yeah very very good followers who produced his work and kept alive which is how it became adopted but his own lifetime he struggled apparently he tended to be a very moral and ethically upright man and this got in the way of his political advancement I know that will be shocking to you but but it is true that he seemed to struggle with with getting along you know going along to get along was apparently not his strong suit but what happened and what sort of his big breakthrough is if you can think of this conceptually is in a feudal system the ruler has a whole bunch of independent Nobles who they rely on to support them and this is always a weak part about this is that you as a king or an emperor or whatever when you're relying on these feudal people to do things is they can team up and turn on you and so it becomes bless you becomes this whole loyalty bribing you know all the sturm and wrong and complexity and problems and not if not a model for peace by the way what they came up with and Confucianism worked perfect for this and this developed slowly over a couple hundred years but Confucianism became the center of this there's a notion of look no you want an imperial ruler one person in the middle who is served by scholars not by hereditary elites to invest in their families but by scholars who take their position from cultural power from cultural capital essentially and from association with the Emperor if as an emperor you can do that then you have a lot of people whose only loyalty is to you they don't have dynastic loyalty to try to get their kids on the throne or to get their uncle promoted to a different position and that concept just is is it's sort of the key idea of having a civil service an independent civil service that you choose people based on excellence and promote them positions of responsibility based on their capacities now to us this seems perfectly reasonable in 100 AD this was crazy talk because everybody knew the best people are born the best you're born to your position the aristocracy rules because hey they've got the weapons and the money and Confucius argued and it turns out successfully against all odds no a lot of this responsibility and power and authority should be vested in people who really understand poetry that's what you want because if they don't understand poetry they're probably not very qualified to have anything to do with civil government see even now this sounds crazy China has successfully implemented this policy for two millennia ah it's just extraordinary but why does this work I mean a word I mean it's work yes it is one of the world spanning civilization but built on this concept bizarre as it may seem to us even today but it it works because if you have an educated elite who has as their central tenant to be high character individuals before anything else even before loyalty to the Emperor by the way I mean you always got to be loyal to the Emperor or you get killed but your first loyalty how to be to to your individual integrity now of course this is with varying degrees are human beings right but that throughput developed for the first time in the world an efficient educated organized elite that was not hereditary and Confucius suggested and something like this was adopted but it's almost amazing Confucius exacts an education system so again this is 450 500 BC and which he said every village of 25 families I think it was 25 every village of 25 families should have essentially an elementary school and then every town of 250 families should have sort of a junior high school and elementary school of course and then every town of 2500 people should have essentially a high school and then every regional capital should have equivalent of a college and the college is where the aristocracy was educated he did not imagine you were going to get rid of the aristocracy it was not a revolutionary in any way but at that college you would get this children of the princes in the aristocracy and those students who had risen through the education system through Demont demonstrated excellence and that would be your future that is I mean 400 500 BC he suggested Thomas Jefferson suggested precisely the same thing for Virginia and it was crazy no one was gonna adopt it like that's crazy that's radical libertarianism we're not doing that and just two thousand one hundred years after Confucius suggested it at about nineteen hundred years after something very like the suggestion was actually adopted when Voltaire and the Enlightenment thinkers found out about what was going on China because about that time and contact it increases so uh they were like whole yeah yes that's it this is what we want you educate people and put them in charge of things what a great idea and again it's hard for us to imagine but for most of human history and for most of the world after he Confucius outside of the Confucian world the generals were basically the sons of the nobility every position in government was held by somebody who was there because they are aristocrats often they farmed out the job itself to other people but they got the job because they paid the aristocrat so you would be the what a minister in charge of irrigation right now irrigation sounds boring but in Agra carrying society's irrigation very big deal really really important of course you've never even been to your office cuz you're a Duke and you're from God knows where you're not going to your office so you sell it to somebody you don't care who you sell it to you sell it to the highest bidder so now you're getting paid and so the person who takes the office in fact but not in title so they'll be the junior minister of irrigation has to make that money back and so irrigation is turned into some sort of tax farming system and throughout the ancient world civilization after civilization Empire after Empire collapsed on this very problem they would reach a certain scale and then they just could not figure out how to crack that that they've just become completely and totally filled with graphing corruption the aristocracy would kill people off you know you you had the succession by the way every time you got a new king he would immediately kill off all of his relatives because they were of course then theoretically in line to be the king and so if they killed him you know so the first thing you do is kill all your brother this is ugly nasty unpleasant kiss orderly so in the 2000 year Confucian history of China it had some periods of disorder but I had about sixteen hundred and fifty years of order this order was brought from outside in masion this is an extraordinary record compared to any civilization and today I didn't know about the New York Times article as I mentioned but the premier of China just gave us one of this every five years they give a speech and have a congress for the big Communist Party Congress but he's been giving a talk that any Confucian scholar could have given at any time in history they announced that the number one threat to China and I want you to imagine this it was president in the United States saying this there's a number one threat that China faces is graft it is that the officials in the government position are not gentlemen they are not living up to the high standards expected of the people that they're supposed to be serving number one threat it's not terrorism not the economy not the United States not you know anything graft corruption it is the purity and the quality of the ministers of state that will be determined the success of China as it goes into the future he just lays this out now some have suspected that he might be a bit of a repressive dictator in making which may be true we'll have to see but the language he uses that resonates with the society is Confucian we need order we want people to be educated correctly we do not want their minds filled with lies this is all a threat to the state also by the way talk at length about economic inequality the the future success of the Chinese experiment will depend on its ability to address economic inequality that's why graft is such a threat against straight from compete I mean you read the Confucian class and they talk about that if the people are starving in the field you're a bad leader and you're going to fail and if they're starving because you are raking excess profits off of the land then you are a terrible leader and you deserve to fail right that is just if you read the speech itself I've been the press reports on it because you know it's a major event in world affairs but it's one of things they miss is that this is well a lot of what he's saying is just really sensible and I just trying to imagine American president standing up and saying the number one threat to the American experiment is graft of public official we wouldn't we'd be like what the hell are you talking about it's either terrorism or something economic or maybe the environment we might say the environment is terrible and - that's gonna destroy us but the notion that it's the character of our political leaders and the officials who run things that that might influence us in any significant way is I mean we can kind of understand that but we're not gonna it just doesn't resonate right we just it doesn't happen China it resonates do they believe it because it'd been believing it for a couple of millennia and when you think about it and we're running the experiment now of course it does seem sort of true ish character of your leaders matters but on a small scale the character the people you surround yourself with and this is this is the confusion thing it gets big and it talks about big things and then he always brings it back to the small to the immediate to the human because he says that's all we can do we can be the best thing we can do the judge in our merits and our merits to be found good so that people will rely on us to do important things then we can get things done otherwise all we can do is either bully people threaten them or sneak around do something behind their backs he says this might work in the short term but it's a long term certain failure right this is this you're just setting yourself up for collapse and if you look at the works of Confucius so this is one of the key things so the Confucian system as it was adopted and of course this is I'm spanning a couple millennia here so very sketchy his regional exam local and regional exams you would study the Confucian classics and if you did well on them then you would pass the classics and you would be certified to be a government official of course you would start low and work your way up it was basically a ticket to unbelievable success I mean that to clear that bar was to elevate yourself and your family and by the way this is all about family this is your art you aren't doing this for you you're doing this for your family you were elevating them to an entire new status to a degree that's that's hard to imagine I mentioned this on my lecture on interest but my professor when I was in college with this was Chinese doctor Locker 12 brilliant brilliant man and he said when he was young he would walk down the street with his grandfather who was a noted scholar and people would lay face down in the street in front of him as he passed because he was a noted scholar there are people who believed in scholarship believed in the dignity of that people so when I talk about elevation I mean in every way and one thing when we talk about Taoism it's important to note that many almost all of the Daoists of note later on were actually X Confucian officials and so this this is a totally different relationship to the world when you're that way so we'll talk about this so you take this exam and now you move up now you're in the Imperial bureaucracy in low level but the opportunity for essentially infinite advancement with if the wonderful novel to read about this is dream dream of the red chamber dream of the red dust it's six or seven volumes depending on the translation and it follows families who are in the imperial service and in various ways and but you get the sense of this that's just this incredible world that they inhabit it's a wonderful especially a soap opera it's just a wonderful film opera but you do realize that the stakes that they were playing for and and that many of the characters in there would be in service and then something would go wrong political fallout and they would lose their job but you used even if you didn't have a job temporarily you still have status so because you at any time you might be called back and some of the characters do get called back right and so it is you know it just changed your whole world so for many many many Chinese it was something to strive for the education that would move you and your family into a different plane of existence reciprocal of that was well now you have responsibilities and all of the evidence suggests that they've took this very stick got done for two thousand years on an unbelievable scale I'm a weird fan of irrigation just because it was so central to the success of agricultural civilizations and the irrigation works in China right up all the way till the modern times but you know Satan 1870 hundred work world class if not far and away better than anything anybody had ever had they were just spectacular and they're all being administered by a bunch of people have been studying poetry and the Confucian classics what we believe in is a technocratic education that if you receive a specialized education and how to dig irrigation canals and make sure they run cleanly and they work and all this then that is good and we will are you to do the job theoretically the fact that you might be lazy or corrupt or inefficient or careerist doesn't really matter because you know how to do the job the Confucian system is like yes we want people to know how to do the job but we would also like people who have character to do the job well in a human way and not rob the government or just randomly kill people while they're doing it that it does matter in theory Confucianism was trying to produce the kinds of leaders and administrators who wouldn't do some of the horrible things we read about in the news all the time right where they go oh you know somebody raises the price of a life-saving drug by five hundred percent or five thousand percent because they can and they're correctly they can and it turns out it's even legal mind-bogglingly enough but this is a third-rate human being at best do we is there it possible to select for first-rate human beings and for all the flaws and the corruption and the problems and everything like that any system trying to deal with people is going to encounter this is its big face of it it's an attempt to sort people to find people of character and the concept is that a person of character trying to do something is better than a person who may know exactly what to do but has no character that that you should opt for the the previous one and and it's an argument I mean you can make this argument is it more important to have good institutions or good people is it more important to have technical expertise or is it more important to have people who have high moral values ethically led good principles and of course you can combine these and they did put specialty education into Confucian system as time went by they realized oh we're gonna need more specialists this you know it's not that confusing or complicated to do this so just appended it later but I guess it for a couple thousand years it worked and so when you look at the Confucian classics it's it seems like a weird collection to us but it hopefully it makes a little more sense the key text for Confucian Canon which I put on your the four books excuse me in the five classics and the four books are the ones that are really focused on Confucius himself and and his writings so the great learning is actually a section of the book of Rights yeah and and if you're gonna start with one book I would say that would probably be the best one it really is sometimes that's discussed as the higher education is another title that that will come under same same book and it is a discussion this is a bit basically a big philosophical discussion of all things we've been pondering the Analects which are very famous and they're all these sorts short pithy conversations that Confucius had with people another good place to start except many many many of the conversations have no context and if you're you know if you don't have if you haven't read everything else it's really easy to mistake the context the idea the theme the emphasis because there are they really are just short after isms little some of them little longer some of them a little shorter but they're but they're but they're quite short Mincha s-- which is just a big book by mensches where you get much longer much fuller discussions particularly about government so a lot of discussions with Dukes and princes and whatnot about various problems and then the mean which is another section of one of the five classics that harmony through sort of the golden moon okay part of this is the Golden Rule do not do unto others as you would not like them to do to you this is cast them and negative in the Chinese world which is by the way notice dual I can avoid doing things to you that I don't want you to do to me that's that's quite possible I cannot do everything for you that I would like you to do for me this is impossible again this pragmatic humanistic core focused on what is theoretically humanly capable of being achieved and then the five classics the classic of poetry or the book of poetry is a book of songs variously translated and it's a 300 ish I think poems 105 songs some other random things it's really a wonderful grab bag but this is in theory a collection that Confucius made from ancient poem songs that he wanted to preserve that's what this is the idea of this one the book of documents which is a history of the Jew dynasty right and this is important because remember I mentioned the look how did they do it and the evidence that we have suggests strongly that Confucius actually went and looked at the archives to compile this if in fact he is the compiler but you know the tradition is that he was and that this is based on actual real research you know this wasn't just him making stuff up it's like hey they used to do it well what did they do let's see if we can learn from that the book of Rights which is again there's a big emphasis on ceremony and the performance of duty and particular ways you know a lot of talk about you know what kind of robe should you wear and what kind of hat should you wear they have great hats by the way we need to bring back those hats but but and we tend to laugh at this and we think this is this is crazy and people tend to overlook the book of rights number one it has all kinds of things it's filled with lots they're just these big potpourri of collections but to how do you make sure your leaders aren't just going off the rails you surround them by forms of behavior and rights and and duties that they have to fulfill in a certain way and if they do this then they are in fact successful and good leaders it's a way of creating like a moral guide for leaders all the way up to the Emperor the Emperor has to perform the correct rites in the correct way which is both educational to him because he learns from doing the correct rites in the correct way to be a correct kind of person and keeps him from going off and doing crazy that he shouldn't do because he's busy doing all the rites in the forms by the way this this if anybody's read the tale of the Genji by Lady Murasaki from from Japan from Heian period in Japan this is what that court is where the court officials in Han Japan were so busy doing rites and performing the necessary duties that it kept them out of trouble and and they sort of just performed these unbelievably elaborate rituals until they got overrun by the Warlord's because there are too busy performing rights and duties but but that but this is this you again you can read this it kind of taken to its most exaggerated extreme it's a wonderful beautiful and clearly doomed concept but in this smaller level is the notion that there are forms that should be followed there are procedures and it matters to the dignity of the office of the dignity of the of the government that they are followed correctly it sounds crazy right why not just do whatever you want whenever you want every president should just come in and do anything they want any way they want no reason to follow the way things have been done right why would you need rights and forms and formal agreements and an international diplomatic movement know that why that doesn't breed harmony or peace or continuity or does it hmm let's reflect on this for a moment right and so these works that often out outside if you're not familiar with their context that seem crazy and off gang what does it have to do with philosophy what does this have to do with good government that just seems like all this burdened with the past but no I mean yes but but not you know logically not irrationally there's very good reasons why Confucius wanted us to have these forms and the i-ching people know the I Ching's if you don't know that I'm gonna try to describe it Wow Wow there there is I mean there's like a whole lecture series right there that is the metaphysics right there if you want to know the metaphysics of the of the system is the Book of Changes it really is an ocean built or all it is in theory it's a method of divination but again something we tend to get wrong it's not the kind of divination that says oh you know should I buy stock and IBM please tell me if you look at the Book of Changes it's a book of reflection it's a book of poetry and ideas and understanding of the world that reflects on you that in theory opens your mind so that you can think more clearly about who you are where you are and what you're contemplating it's really the sort of interactive self interrogation reflective meditation aid that is is just you know astounding and again in theory ascribed to Confucius gathering it and commenting on it but in practice not so much and then the spring autumn annals which again is another history or chronicles of his own region to set an example how do things go right how do things go wrong how do you make sure things stay working well in the world and then finally I would like to recommend it's just the the modern library has this little book called the wisdom of Confucius and I recommend this strongly if you if you're only going to read one short thing this is very coherent lis organized has lots of background information in it and the scholar Lin Yutang just to spend time with the mind of this man is a treat what a beautiful beautiful work of scholarship this is in the greatest tradition of Confucian scholarship just the the passages the notes the background information the way he is just I mean it really is truly I would say a joy always recommend going to the original text if you have Chinese that would be even better but but you know in translation even but it this is just the modern library again delivering a good book but really Lin Yutang the wisdom of Confucian in the modern library Wow like I said the confusion work is great but just to spend time with the mind of that man is extraordinary and so just like we just don't recognize this almost as a philosophical system he has overarching principles but nothing that is like live or die you know it's hard to even grasp but the metaphysical core here and there is one vet offical important element that is important by the way which runs wild in the I Ching is that the universe is harmonious at its core the universe itself is harmonious it's just a law he just says this over and over again and I've always in my mind I was trying to imagine how to conceptualize this and if you go out quickly in the mountains on a cold night in at Starion so just painfully clear right like there's more stars and you've ever seen before and you just feel this infinite quiet vastness that just overwhelms you with order I always think that's it that's the harmony of the universe that Confucius thought just existed as a law and they said if you make order in your own heart the order that you find will be the order of the universe you are in fact because that's what the real order in the world is the universal order that's the law when you find the good you found the order the order is that is just the universe in you and so so he appeals in the end always to this notion that in the end the universe is harmonious and so things that are dis harmonious are dis harmonious because we've made some sort of mistake probably personally and that the best way to achieve harmony is again if we just go back to where I started is only one way to gain confidence of one's authority if a man is not trusted by his friends how do you get your friends to trust you how do you get your parents to level you how do you get you to understand yourself you reach into that core foundation of Confucianism which is the reform of our individual selves through study to produce people of character and then if you can fill the world with people of character it will be as I said from the previous quote orderly joyous prosperous filled with music peaceful and wonderful that doesn't come from God it doesn't come from the Emperor it doesn't come from any place it comes from us and there's the cumulative impact of this that Confucius really looked at and said man if we could do this we could pull this off with people here and now we would have it so Confucian philosophy thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 24,071

Rating: 4.8287463 out of 5

Keywords: Humane Arts, Wes Cecil, Confucius, Ethics, Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy

Id: lZUksUSXH94

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2017