Lecture 11: Confucianism

To say Confucianism, we must first talk about Confucius, and Confucius can definitely say that he was a great thinker and writer in ancient China. There is no doubt that he compiled and compiled works such as Yi, Shu, Li, Music, Poems, and Spring and Autumn, and made great contributions to the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture.

His thoughts are mainly embodied in the Analects, but the Analects is not his work. The ideas of the Analects are similar to those of Socrates, and they were edited by their disciples, and in doing so, they became the foundation of the two major cultures of the East and the West.

In ancient China, no matter how clever you were and how profound your thoughts were, you could not surpass Confucius. This does not include modern Chinese culture, which is along the lines of Socrates' ideas.

In the West, no matter how clever you are and how profound your thinking is, you have to follow the path of Socrates' thought, and you can't go beyond the scope of Socrates' thought, even the contemporary Eastern civilization is advancing along the path of Socrates' thought.

The Chinese and the Japanese smashed their original cultures in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries respectively, and Conghua Western civilization, Conghua thought is the path of philosophy, that is, the path of Socrates' thought.

From this point of view, it can be said with complete certainty that the culture of Confucius and the culture of Socrates are two completely different cultures, and there is no doubt that the culture of Confucius does not belong to the scope of philosophy, and it has nothing to do with philosophy.

Many contemporary Chinese are blushing in the debate about this, that is, they want to forcefully stuff Confucius culture into the category of philosophy, which is wanton distorting the facts, if Confucius culture is a philosophical culture, is it still necessary to smash it? Is it still necessary for the Japanese to engage in the Meiji Restoration, and is it necessary for China to engage in the Xinhai Revolution?!

It's very simple and clear, and the facts still need to be argued!!

If we want to understand what Confucius culture is, we have to start with the foundation of Confucian culture.

As mentioned earlier, Confucianism was just one of the hundred schools of thought before the Qin Dynasty, and it was two people who really made Confucian culture brilliant, one was Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and the other was Zhu Yuanzhang. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty inherited and promoted the ideas of Confucius and Mencius. Zhu Yuanzhang inherited and carried forward the Confucian thought.

There is no doubt that there is a huge difference between Confucius and Mencius and Confucius and Zhu in Confucian culture, otherwise Zhu Yuanzhang would not have invited Mencius out of the Confucian Temple. In the future, I will talk about the differences between Confucius and Mencius and Confucius and Zhu.

For more than a thousand years after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, until the emergence of Zhu Yuanzhang, China's upper-level ideology was Confucius and Mencius thought.

In the 600 years after Zhu Yuanzhang, Kong and Zhu Thought was the ideology of the upper class, a cultural and ideological program that absolutely dominated China's politics, religion, and humanities, and no one could surpass it, and it became the most hard-line cultural and ideological product in the world at that time, so that the Chinese had no way out of Confucian culture.

All of this comes from a sentence of Confucius in "Yi Chuan: The Upload of Words": "Yi has Taiji, which is to give birth to two rituals, two rituals to give birth to four elephants, and four elephants to give birth to gossip." This sentence is clearly a fortune-telling culture, but in fact, it is one of the roots of traditional Chinese culture, representing the patriarchal and root system of Confucian culture.

Confucius said in the "Yi Chuan: The Upload of Dictionaries" that "one yin and one yang is the Tao", and in the "Book of Rites: Commentary on the Scriptures", he said: "The blind date between the upper and lower levels is called benevolence", and later when teaching students, he said: "The benevolent person loves others, and the love is poor." ”

These three passages seem simple, but in fact, they are the patriarchal and root system of Confucian culture.

Why?

"One yin and one yang is the Tao. "Derived from the I Ching patriarchal law, derived from "Yi has Taiji, is to give birth to two rituals, two rituals give birth to four elephants, and four elephants give birth to gossip." And these two sentences are the foundation of traditional Chinese culture, that is, the way of yin and yang, yin and yang.

The I Ching patriarchal method starts from yin and yang, yin and yang are the beginning of all things, there is yin without yang is called widow, there is yang without yin is lonely, yin and yang are embraced, and mutual sympathy is called "Tao".

"Dao" is the natural law of heaven and earth, and everything in the world originates from "Dao". "Everything in the world is the result of the perfection of inheritance, and it is "sex" that makes all this possible. However, the Tao is a general word, which refers to all things and all things, and only refers to the way of people, which is "benevolence", so Confucius said that "one yin and one yang is the Tao" and "the upper and lower relatives are benevolence." ”

"Ren", what is "Ren", and where does "Ren" come from?

"Benevolence" "The Book of Rites: The Mean" says "The benevolent person is also a person." Benevolence from people, from two. Benevolence from people, plural, two people for benevolence, benevolence from two not from three. "Shuowen" said: "Benevolence, proximity." "The Book of Rites: Commentary" says: "The blind date between the upper and lower levels is benevolence." ”

This is the core of Confucianism, which refines the Yin and Yang Tao that governs all things into the humane way of benevolence, and the foundation of humanity is "benevolence." "This is a blind date. "Ren, dear. But there are ranks, classes, and specifications of relatives, and they must be "blind dates up and down", so Confucius said: "The benevolent person loves others, and there is a difference in love." ”

What is "benevolence", benevolence from people, from two. Benevolence from people, plural, two people for benevolence, benevolence from two not from three.

"Ren, dear. "The way of man is that the blind date between the two is humane," and the blind date is benevolent. It is not allowed to start from three or three, it is wide, and it is open. But benevolence from the two, from "easy to have Taiji, is to give birth to two instruments," this two instruments are "two".

It can be seen from this that the "benevolence" of Confucianism is limited and class-based, and it is only subordinate to two and not to three.

The "benevolence" of Confucianism is divided into rich and poor, privileged class and common class, so Confucius said, "The benevolent person loves others, and there is a difference in love." This sentence is the key, this sentence is the embodiment and purpose of "benevolence and love for others", but "love is poor". That is to say, "benevolence" is the embodiment of "loving others", but "loving others" is "inferior", has limitations, and has class divisions.

It can be seen from this that there is a class hierarchy of "benevolence" in Confucianism, which is only produced between classes, and there is no benevolence if it is not a class.

Confucianism believes that human beings are the beginning of "benevolence", and only human beings can have "benevolence", "benevolence", "love for others", and "blind dates between the upper and lower levels", but there are class restrictions on "love and difference". Benevolence from two, not from three, from top to bottom, not from left and right, from closed not from open, from autocracy not from democracy.

Therefore, Confucius's benevolence is not the "love" in philosophy, but the "love" in philosophy. "Wisdom" is mutual love, mutual love, no hierarchical differences, no class status, equality for all, democracy and freedom. The philosophical "love" is not only from the second, but also from the third, from the top and bottom, from the left and right, from the closed and from the open, from the autocracy and from the democracy, from all the "love" in the world.

Both philosophy and Confucianism talk about love and wisdom, but the wisdom of Confucianism is set up for the privileged, and it talks about hierarchical concepts and class differences, and Confucianism is, as Hegel said, a culture designed for privilege. On the contrary, all the wisdom of philosophy is to say that everyone is equal, to eliminate classes, to open up civil rights and private rights, to limit public rights and political power, to protect the weak and to limit the strong, and philosophy is the real sense of civilian culture.

So how can you confuse philosophy with Confucianism?

It can be seen that they are not a system at all. The "benevolence" of Confucianism is the establishment of "benevolence" for class differentiation, which also shows that Confucius is fundamentally the founder of classism, the defender of the privileged class, the classifier of the rich and the poor, the promoter of the heavenly fixed objects, and the founder of Confucianism that is different from philosophy from the root nodules.

This is also the root cause of contemporary people of insight who hate Confucianism's "benevolence, benevolence, and benevolence". Because all the theories of Confucianism start from the word "benevolence", from two, not from three, from top to bottom, not from left and right, from closed but not open, from autocracy not from democracy. Only from two, from the dualistic system, all personnel from the closed, from the class. And today's world is talking about democracy, openness, innovation, and equality for all rather than class.

Therefore, it is inevitable to criticize Confucianism.

Section 4: Confucianism and Taoism

In the process of understanding and transforming nature, the Chinese nation has produced two major local cultures, namely Confucianism and Taoism. Although they both belong to the traditional Chinese culture of the Book of Changes, they have completely different ideological and cultural systems, namely the dualistic theory of time and space and the theory of ternary spiritual existence. These are the two main ideological and cultural systems of human civilization, namely the two major ideological and cultural systems of Destiny and the Theory of Existence, also known as Eastern science and Western philosophy.

Confucianism and Taoism, although rooted in the Book of Changes, but their ideological roots are completely different, they come from the two parts of the Book of Changes, "Hetu and Luoshu", that is, the binary principle of Hetu and the ternary principle of Luoshu. In the end, two different religious, political, and humanistic ideologies and cultures were formed.

The Confucian ideology and culture, which formed pure materialism in religion, politics, and humanities, is also called the Oriental science culture, and the Taoist ideology and culture that identifies with theism are also called the Western philosophical culture.

Eastern philosophy promotes the doctrine of destiny, while Western philosophy emphasizes the theory of existence. If subdivided, Confucianism belongs to Eastern science, while Taoism belongs to Western philosophy, so Confucius is not a philosopher, because he is an atheist, a pure materialist, and his core idea only talks about the "reason" of things. Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi were philosophers because they recognized the existence of God, and their ideas were similar to those of Westerners who believed that the world was a materialistic and idealistic philosophical system in which "spirit and matter" coexisted. If we use politics, humanities, and religious culture to reflect these two major ideological systems, that is, Confucianism and Taoism, Confucianism and Taoism, and Confucianism and Taoism.

"Confucian" culture has never recognized the existence of gods, Confucianism only recognizes that there is an emperor and there is an emperor, and the emperor and the human emperor are real human beings, and they are purely material human beings. The core content of "Confucian" culture comes from Confucius's "Yi Chuan: The Upload of Words": "Yi has Taiji, which is to give birth to two rituals, two rituals to give birth to four elephants, and four elephants to give birth to gossip." The core religious proposition of the "Confucian" culture is that "heaven and man are induced, and the monarch's power is divinely conferred"; the core content of politics is that "heaven bestows the rules of the monarch and people follow their rule", and that "benevolence and righteousness" are observed, "heaven and earth" are worshipped, "kings and ministers" are respected, "fathers and sons" are recognized, and "the mandate of heaven" is recognized; and humanistic thought is "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith." ”

"Dao" culture recognizes the existence of gods, so you will see that Taoism has a "god list", anthropomorphic worship, and the gods of Taoism are all ancient heroes and moral models. The ideological core content of the "Tao" culture comes from Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching": "Tao gives birth to one, life to two, two to three, and three to all things". The core religious content of the "Tao" culture is "God respects the way of heaven and moralizes life", and the political proposition is "rule by inaction" and rest with the people. Humanistic thought is "the road to simplicity".

Since the political, humanistic, and religious ideologies and cultures of the two Confucianism and Taoism are completely different, you will see that the Chinese treat the Confucianism and Taoism differently in two ways. Confucianism is based on the political idea of governing the world by people, governing the hearts of the people with virtue, and governing people with etiquette, while Taoism is kicked out of the superstructure by the ruling class in ancient China because of the political ideas of human freedom, quiet inaction, and rule by inaction.

After the great cultural changes in ancient China in the 13th century, Westerners led their culture to the three-element spiritual existential theory advocated by "Luoshu", while China completely abandoned the principle of "Luoshu" in the Ming Dynasty and marched towards the dualistic time-space theory advocated by "Hetu", which eventually led to the traditional Chinese culture being photographed to death on the beach.

Looking back at history, we will find that before the Yuan Dynasty, the thinking and culture of the Chinese were very free, and countless outstanding cultural masters appeared. Therefore, almost all of the ancient Chinese culture that contemporary Chinese study is pre-Yuan culture. Our ideas come from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, our literature comes from the Qin and Han dynasties, our calligraphy and painting come from the Two Jin Dynasty, our poems come from the Tang and Song dynasties, and our opera comes from the Yuan Dynasty. However, since the Ming Dynasty, traditional Chinese culture has developed into a closed time and space, which eventually led to the fact that traditional Chinese culture has become a chicken rib and a culture that is almost dead.

It can be seen from this that human ideology and culture are the engine for the development of human civilization, and in a strict sense, world culture is a multicultural development from one to two, from two to three, and then from three to fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth directions.

Why do I have to say so much nonsense before I talk about Bazi, because if you want to learn Bazi, you have to understand traditional Chinese thought and culture, and all this nonsense I said is something you can't see before. Whether it is from the mouths of school teachers or from the so-called "national studies" on TV, you can't see these contents. It's just that I am soft-spoken, and what I say is not taken seriously.

However, everything I said is the truth of traditional Chinese culture.