Reading about Confucius in these times is sobering. Not just about the alas universal experience of living under unjust rulers - what does the 君子 gentleman-scholar do, since fleeing public responsibility (what Daoists encourage) is not an option? But it's sobering also thinking about what can make a chaotic disrupter seem appealing, a force of creativity rather than destruction. Above is an excerpt from David Hall and Roger Ames' 1987 Thinking Through Confucius (p23), a contrast - avowedly overdrawn - between western ethical culture and China's.Monday, January 30, 2017
Against self-serving effrontery
Reading about Confucius in these times is sobering. Not just about the alas universal experience of living under unjust rulers - what does the 君子 gentleman-scholar do, since fleeing public responsibility (what Daoists encourage) is not an option? But it's sobering also thinking about what can make a chaotic disrupter seem appealing, a force of creativity rather than destruction. Above is an excerpt from David Hall and Roger Ames' 1987 Thinking Through Confucius (p23), a contrast - avowedly overdrawn - between western ethical culture and China's.