Mair 12:2

[Marblehead]

The master said, "The Way is that which covers and supports the myriad things.  Oceanic is its greatness!  The superior man must lay his mind bare to it.  To act through nonaction is called heaven; to speak through nonaction is called virtue; to love men and benefit things is called humaneness; to make the dissimilar similar is called greatness; to conduct oneself without ostentation is generosity; to possess a myriad dissimilarities is wealth.  Therefore, to maintain virtue is called the guideline; the completion of virtue is called establishment; to accord with the Way is called completion; not to allow things to distract the will is called fulfillment.  When the superior man understands these ten qualities, how commodious will be the greatness of his mind, how copious will be his flowing with the myriad things!  Such being the case, he lets the gold lie hidden in the mountains, the pearls in the depths.  He does not profit from goods or property, does not associate with honor and wealth.  He does not rejoice in longevity, is not saddened by premature death.  He finds no glory in success, no shame in poverty.  He would not grasp at the profit of the whole world to make it his private possession, nor would he rule all under heaven as his personal distinction.  His distinction lies in understanding that the myriad things belong to a single treasury, and that life and death have the same appearance."

[Marblehead]

Well, obviously this is not Confucian philosophy.

 

Anyone disagree?

 

[Stosh]

Nope.

 

But how does aspiring to greatness by not doing anything appear to you, to be a good thing?

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, Stosh said:

Nope.

 

But how does aspiring to greatness by not doing anything appear to you, to be a good thing?

Yeah, we need to be careful when talking about that concept of "non-doing".

 

More properly, I think, would be "non-interference with natural processes".

 

I guess that Chuang Tzu was a teacher.  Teachers do things.  He seems to also have been a traveler.  Travelling requires a lot of doing.

 

[Taoist Texts]

On 9/29/2017 at 7:06 PM, Marblehead said:

Well, obviously this is not Confucian philosophy.

 

Mair wrongly  makes this to be about some abstract personal qualities.

But ZZ talks about personal qualities needed for governing. He describes not some kind of a superior person, but specifically a ruler 君子. Which incidentally is a confucian term.

Edited October 1, 2017 by Taoist Texts

[Stosh]

君子  ..Junzi , I read in wikipedia,,  predates Confucius , in the IChing ,( meaning loosely, Übermensch ) . So I am thinking that although Conf. likes and uses the term , its not 'his'. 

 

[Taoist Texts]

may be there were Confucians before Confucius) 

[Stosh]

29 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

may be there were Confucians before Confucius) 

Maaayybe...

So are you suggesting time travel,   or that Conf. was a hack? 

 

[Taoist Texts]

Confucius | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Above all else, the Analects depicts Confucius as someone who "transmits, but does not innovate" (7.1).  

 

 

CLASS NOTES: Confucius: I Transmit, I Do Not Innovate (Chinese ...

Jan 23, 2015 - Confucius sees himself as merely passing on the Western Zhou tradition - Analects 7.1 

 

The Globalization of Confucius and Confucianism

Klaus Mühlhahn, ‎Nathalie van Looy - 2012 - ‎Religion

This however begs the question: Why didn't Confucius advance new ideas? ... sacred mission to edit, revise, annotate, interpret, and transmit the ancient culture.

 

[Marblehead]

Well, we need give him credit, he did speak against the vices of man.  Nobody listened because they rather enjoyed their vices.

 

 

[Stosh]

11 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

Confucius | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Above all else, the Analects depicts Confucius as someone who "transmits, but does not innovate" (7.1).  

 

 

CLASS NOTES: Confucius: I Transmit, I Do Not Innovate (Chinese ...

Jan 23, 2015 - Confucius sees himself as merely passing on the Western Zhou tradition - Analects 7.1 

 

The Globalization of Confucius and Confucianism

Klaus Mühlhahn, ‎Nathalie van Looy - 2012 - ‎Religion

This however begs the question: Why didn't Confucius advance new ideas? ... sacred mission to edit, revise, annotate, interpret, and transmit the ancient culture.

 

Well that is a spin I didn't expect, well done. 

Isn't the setting in which all the big names arose Also Zhou? Mozi, Mencius,  Lao as well as Conf. ?

 

If that's the case , then I still don't see why the use of the term relegates the passage to belong with Conf. I'm thinking all these authors were concerned with the ideal presentation of virtue , ( and they had moved away from the idea of the rulers ancestral right to rule or ancestral virtue  , to a more flexible heaven anointed meritocratic means of determining 'mandate' in rulers ,or merit in men. )

[Stosh]

5 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Well, we need give him credit, he did speak against the vices of man.  Nobody listened because they rather enjoyed their vices.

 

 

To like that I need to know what is being called vice. 

[Marblehead]

4 hours ago, Stosh said:

To like that I need to know what is being called vice. 

Chuang Tzu is going to tell us about that later.

 

[Stosh]

2 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Chuang Tzu is going to tell us about that later.

 

Cz is going to tell us what Conf. thought a vice was? .. actually that makes sense since one of them didnt have any original ideas of his own.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

16 minutes ago, Stosh said:

Cz is going to tell us what Conf. thought a vice was? .. actually that makes sense since one of them didnt have any original ideas of his own.

Stop trying to get me confused.

 

[Stosh]

14 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Stop trying to get me confused.

 

I'm confused myself,

If the western Zhou dynasty was replaced or  became the Eastern Zhou in 770 BC ,

thats about three hundred years before  Conf  Cz  Lao Mencius and so forth.

(who lived during the warring states period, appx 457 BC ,  which finally broke up the Eastern Zhou into territories around 314 BC. ) 

SO all of the Scholars would technically be Eastern Zhou. 

So , then, 

This kind of makes sense .. 

The modern thinking , was that which originated with Lao and Cz ,

Confucius would be 'old school' by studying old texts, even if he lived at the same time,  or after Lao. 

Have I got this straight? 

[Marblehead]

Yeah, I think it would be safe to say that the philosophies existed prior to Lao Tzu and Confucius.  These two are given credit, more than they deserve, for bringing the root concepts into one piece of work.  Both, I think, just took already existing partial works and consolidated them.

 

I think that much, if not most, of it goes back to before written history to when it was passed down via word of mouth.

 

 

[Stosh]

And what of Zz?

[rene]

4 hours ago, Stosh said:

Cz is going to tell us what Conf. thought a vice was? .. actually that makes sense since one of them didnt have any original ideas of his own.

Or both of them, heh. ZZ took LZs ideas and twisted them into unrecognizable lumps using more words than any Übermensch has a right to. Imo, of course. :-D

[Taoist Texts]

12 hours ago, Stosh said:

Well that is a spin I didn't expect, well done. 

Isn't the setting in which all the big names arose Also Zhou? Mozi, Mencius,  Lao as well as Conf. ?

Zhou is a distant backdrop to all of them, yes.

12 hours ago, Stosh said:

 

If that's the case , then I still don't see why the use of the term relegates the passage to belong with Conf.

Well, the passage is about governing the state, which is allegedly a confucian domain.

 

12 hours ago, Stosh said:

 

I'm thinking all these authors were concerned with the ideal presentation of virtue , ( and they had moved away from the idea of the rulers ancestral right to rule or ancestral virtue  , to a more flexible heaven anointed meritocratic means of determining 'mandate' in rulers ,or merit in men. )

I totally agree. It could be even argued that ancestral ruling rights were always subsumed by the mandate in china. 

[Stosh]

Ive seen it contended that Laozi also was intended for rulership of state and if so then Conf is in the same sack as Lao, If ,as Rene contends, Zz was an extension of Lao, then he too is in there , and for the same reason so too all the guys were proponents of the same genre of political opinion. 

I construe Mh to be indicating that all these were extensions of traditions which preceded them, and they provide no substantial point of differentiation to furcate the traditions.