Word: confucian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...struggle between good and evil. The famous principles of Yin and Yang imply an alternate cosmic rhythm but not a struggle. Nor is there a relationship of struggle-or love or dialogue-between man and God. China is agnostic and scarcely knows a religion in the Western sense. Confucian teaching is not concerned with metaphysics. As the Master once told his disciples: "Till you have learned to serve men. how can you serve spirits?" In the Confucian view, man is essentially good-which is why the Chinese have a sense of shame but not of sin. To stay good...
These comforting paradoxes provided mental escape for the Chinese in times of stress. Thanks to the unique Chinese gift for blending all manner of faiths, Taoism managed to coexist with Confucianism over the centuries. A Chinese in power, it has been said, is a Confucian: out of power, he is a Taoist, and when about to die, a Buddhist. China absorbed Buddhism, too; in China, somehow, the evanescent idea of nirvana became transmuted into a far earthier notion...
...China, anything resembling nationhood was understood only in terms of a kind of superfamily, with the Emperor as the patriarch. Ultimately, in the Confucian view, all government was based on virtue. So long as the head of the great Chinese family was virtuous, all was well with the land; but if the country fared ill, it must be because the Emperor had fallen into evil ways and the "mandate of heaven" had been withdrawn. That was the traditional rationale for the periodic rebellions that brought down every Chinese dynasty. Mencius, a revered follower of Confucius, proclaimed the people...
...distaste for force in the Confucian order is profound, one indication being the low social status of the soldier. Men who know how to employ ruse, the traditional weapon of the weak against the strong, are particularly admired. A famous Chinese story describes how a poet wrote a novel considered dangerous by the Emperor and was summoned to court to be punished; he bribed the boatman to travel as slowly as possible, and by the time he arrived, he had written a new novel so fantastic that the Emperor decided he must be insane and spared his life. To many...
...Fairbank said that the Chinese leader actually more closely resembles the prototypical Chinese emperor than any of his heroes in the Marxist pantheon. Eventually, he said, the better side of the feudal Chinese ruler may reassert itself in his successors. China is still governed, after all, by a "great Confucian political fiction, the myth of rule by virtue...