孔子: A Confucian Society

UIBE, 27ºC, hazy

Today, conversation with my language partner turned to Chinese thinkers. Last year, I studied the works of some Chinese philosophers, from 老子 Laozi’s Daodejing and 孔子 Confucius’ Analects to the more abstract work of 庄子 Zhuangzi and the military writings of 孙子 Sun Tzu. Although my language partner was doing most of the talking, it was really quite exciting to be addressing these works in Chinese.

For the most part, we reflected on the influence on Confucius on China’s modern day 社会 society and the 思想 mindset of the Chinese people. Confucius put individual benevolence and virtue at the core of his philosophy. He extended this idea to governance in Analects II, 1: “To govern by virtue, let us compare it to the North Star: it stays in its place, while the myriad stars wait upon it.” One reading of this can be that governance should be uncompromising, just as the North Star. Other stars (perhaps other country’s or other governments) will adjust accordingly. Considering in Chinese, China is 中国, literally “middle country”, it seems that as far back as 500BC China has considered itself as the heartbeat of this world.

Interestingly, Confucius never spoke of a rule of law; he proposed a rule of man. This is not only reflected in the historically strong ties between families from generation to generation, but it is also manifested in the current lack of rule of law in the country. Perhaps the entrenchment of Confucian philosophy in the minds of the Chinese people and the ideals, philosophical ones at least, of the Chinese government is proving a stumbling block to the introduction of a fair, effective and respected rule of law.