Books that matter: Analects of Confucius
Almost everyone has heard of Confucius, and yet relatively few people in the West know much about him or why the one little book attributed to him-he didn't write a word of it, actually- has changed the world. At times ambiguous, contradictory, and even maddening, the Analects of Confucius is also filled with priceless wisdom and is deeply rewarding to explore. This provocative text that has shaped China and vast territories beyond it for millennia.
Imagination.
That one word sums up Confucius, the Analects, and the influence of his teachings.
Confucius's critics dismissed him as a narrow-minded pedant, but he was anything but that. He offers invaluable insights on how to live your life. Don't just earn your keep and rest on your days off, he urges; look, learn, imagine, teach. Live your work (and certainly don't just work to live, if you can help it). Think about it, ponder it, and find elements of lasting reflection even in the simplest of daily activities. This course will show you why and how to make Confucius's text into a lifetime teaching tool for yourself, your family, your community, and the larger world, just as Confucius intended.
Westerners tend to think about big questions through one of two lenses. Sometimes we contemplate the great structures of the universe or the vast sweep of human history, and other times we study the tiny structures that shape our knowledge, from DNA to subatomic particles. Both lenses embody the Western emphasis on logic, rationality, and a highly individualistic view of the world.
Confucius certainly doesn't seem to be looking at the world through those lenses, nor does he seem to be asking the big questions Immanuel Kant asked about how we know what we think we know. He asked about our aesthetic standards. Kant argued for uncompromising ethical standards. How could Confucius ever compete with that?
In fact, Confucius's Analects does deal with the big questions. Questions don't get any bigger than how we should live our lives with and among others.
Source credit: Professor Robert André LaFleur, Beloit College
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