Word: confucius
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Thus, in the Communists' eyes, the ideas of Confucius contain no universal truths...
...Both Confucius and Mao place great stress on internalizing "correct" ideas and on the need for the ruler to act as a moral exemplar. Moreover, the party cadres, steeped in Marxism-Leninism, bear what must be to Mao some disconcerting resemblances to the old Confucian bureaucracy, steeped in the revered classics...
...Confucius may have had peace and order in mind, but he nonetheless laid the ground for China's traditional authoritarianism. His stress on reverence for authority provided a foundation for often passive, fatalistic obedience to the rulers of the state. Confucius believed in the necessity of an educated elite, a kind of aristocracy of virtue, to run the affairs of society. Thus, in the eyes of the Communists, he fostered exactly the kind of deep division between ruler and ruled that runs counter to Mao's expressed principle that in a proletarian society the masses rule themselves. Even...
Remaking Man. At the root of Mao's rejection of the sage is Confucius' belief: "By nature men are pretty much alike." He was convinced that human nature remained unchanged from tune to tune and society to society, only being affected by education. The Communist goal is to remake man in a new proletarian image...
Looked at in the long run, the anti-Confucian diatribe is part of Mao's continuing effort to transform the nature of man. He wants to replace the Confucian habits of tranquillity, obedience and fatalism with a new Promethean man of struggle and combativeness. For him, Confucius continues to be a symbol of everything in China that represents hierarchy, stagnation and complacency. For that reason, the sage cannot be permitted to sleep in peace...