Word: mao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...There is no human nature in the abstract," Mao wrote in 1942, "there is only human nature with class character...
...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 more offensive to the Communist is the Confucianists' extremely unproletarian disdain for manual labor. "The superior man attends to spiritual things and not to his livelihood," was Confucius' pronouncement...
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...
...statement appearing in the association's latest newsletter said the investigation was prompted by the firing last May of Isabelle P. Mao, an instructor in Chinese. Efforts by CSA members to reverse the decision late last spring were unsuccessful...