So, I finished the Analects. I read the Quran last. Probably will go on to "In the Buddha's Words," the one that is purple and translated by Bodhi. It's funny. It took me a few months to get through both of them. I'm just turning into a sluggish reader. I don't know whether it's because I've grown more lazy or me wanting more time to digest things. Haven't felt much of a desire to read fiction either. I quite enjoyed reading about Confucius. I read the Hackett edition with all the commentary added on. I kind of expected to get a compilation of trite sayings, but I feel the Analects is much more subtle. It doesn't focus on metaphysical arguments and I'm not really sure I can call it philosophy proper (in my understanding of it), but I feel like he presents a pretty compelling worldview. He's a bit too focused on virtue and ritual for my taste (more of a Utilitarian), but he presents a very practical philosophy that I can respect and admire. What does /lit/ think of the Analects?
>>24116646I can't read Chinesian.
>>24116651Well, lucky for you, we got a translation. I highly doubt it's as untranslatable as some on here seem to claim.
I prefer Mengzi, Zhuangzi, Han Fei, Xunzi and Mozi
>>24116646I haven't read it, but it seems like good practical advice, especially the inverted golden rule.
>>24116646ironically the analects is one of the worst confucian textsDoctrine of the Mean is far superior Mencius is also the most kino book ever written however your taste has to be extremely cultivated to enjoy it
>>24116666That's basically all the famous ones besides Confucius. I don't think any of them are consistent with each other besides the fact they aren't Confucius. >>24116671>inverted golden ruleYou talking how officials can't expect the people to be moral if they themselves are immoral?
>>24116676They're written in a much more interesting way than the short pithy statements of the Analects or Dao De Jing
>>24116678Did you read a translation like the one in photo where it had the commentary? I'm not sure I would've grasped a lot of it if I hadn't because it's often quite subtle.
>>24116680Yeah Idk if it'd be possible to find the Analects interesting without the commentary
Confucius is an absolute slave. Sublimating the self to an abstracted community and hierarchy for the sake of order when the exact people who are causing the disorder are the people Confucius wants to prostrate to. Not only to living people who simply want to use you as beasts of burden, but also you have to be a slave to the ideals of the dead too. All of this transposed into a metaphysics of obedience (Tao) where he and his followers would be a parasitic advisory class like every priestly class in history having a monopoly on the knowledge of heaven to secure their place on the top of tax hoard. At least the Legalists were honest about it, and the Confucians deserved to be buried alive.
>>24116698And yet, who's getting the last laugh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAiltiE8tgI&
>>24116701>He buried 460 confucians alive - we have buried 46,000 confucians alive," Mao said in a speech to party cadres. "You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold."
>>24116698I feel like this is kind of a distortion of Confucius though. Confucius takes it as a prerequisite that one cannot server immoral rulers. If the ruler be immoral then one should protest and if the ruler doesn't reform then you should leave. Confucius also wasn't a rich man or held high position. And he offered to teach anybody whether they had money or not. He didn't "monopolize knowledge.">The Master said, “Be sincerely trustworthy and love learning, and hold fast to the good Way until death. Do not enter a state that is endangered, and do not reside in a state that is disordered. If the Way is being realized in the world then show yourself; if it is not, then go into reclusion. In a state that has the Way, to be poor and of low status is a cause for shame; in a state that is without the Way, to be wealthy and honored is equally a cause for shame. (8.13)
>>24116712As soon as Mao died all of his biggest supporters were either dead or imprisoned in a couple years. What Mao did accomplish was unifying China and not much beyond that. And it came at a heavy price.
Thank you thank you. Thank you so much, it really means a lot to me. I just want to say thank you to OP for having such a wonderful thread. I've known OP for a long time, maybe, oh, five minutes or so, we go back a long ways. You see, OP has really helped to clarify some important things for all of us, like the way Confucius explains personal relationships between people in society, and how much they mean to us, and what the nature of those personal relationships are. For example, Kyle is a jew, and we're going to send him to death camp, now aren't we?::crowd goes wild::Yeah, I thought so. We're going to gas that kike. I just want to tell you how important this is, and how much it means to me. Thank you very much.::applause::::cheering::
Chinks are obsessed with morality because (A) they don't have the poo guru system, the chinks are a separate race from the poos, they're cut off from the poo guru system and (B) they use morality (obey books, books tell you what to do, books tell you how to behave) to order their society.So, taking on the chinks and the CCP should, in theory, be a simple matter of social engineering: all we have to do is study morality, figure out how to hack it, and then do Neuromancer shit, like in The Matrix. I'm telling you: crack the code in Confucius, Mencius, Diamond Sutra, and the Classic of Poetry and we're fucking in, motherfucker, we're fucking in like Tron 'n' sheit fr fr no cap
>>24116811Okay, so, I may have exaggerated some points here. If we really want to do this, we're going to need Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Hsun Tzu a.k.a. Xunzi, and Huangbo. You see, the problem here is that the poos are barely literate, and what they did write down is crap, like, it's really crappy stuff. It's like "I learned to write in middle school and never practiced after that." It's just an embarrassment. The chinks, on the other hand, take writing so fucking seriously it's like they're doing rap battles a thousand years ago. I mean, just read Donshan cases #3 and #4. It'll blow your fuckin' mind, man, like Strange Days and Akira and Ghost in the Shell (yeah, I know those last two are nip, but w/e)https://terebess.hu/zen/dongshan-eng.html(scroll down to where it says -3-)
>>24116698>Sublimating the self to an abstracted community and hierarchy for the sake of order when the exact people who are causing the disorder are the people Confucius wants to prostrate to.Your image is ironic because this is the same exact definition of conservative patrician Roman ideology
>>24116646>>24116666I prefer Guiguzi
>>24116811This sounds like a great idea. Now read the Analects, find some loophole in the system, and then go to China and abuse it. I'm sure it'll go great.
>>24116911erm, mao abolished confucianism in china.
>>24116914They literally built a giant Confucius statue in Tienanmen Square. Course it's gone now, but that fact that they built it at all is telling.
>>24116918having to remove a statue immediately after building it is a sign that that dude has been abolished in china.
>>24116923Regardless, you can read about the structure of totalitarian movements in pp. 381-384 of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianismhttps://archive.org/details/TheOriginsOfTotalitarianism/page/n399/mode/2upOne line of thought goes like this: the Chinese are so focused on virtue due to the Confucian roots that totalitarian movements have a particularly easy time of it owing to their structure and the way lying is used to deceive some but not others.
