/lit/ - Literature

There is a Buddhist chart, but I’d like to see a Confucian chart and a Taoist Chart

So let me get this straight; are these two fuckers the Plato and Aristotle of the Far East?
>Confucius (Plato) and Laozi (Aristotle)
Then who's the Socrates? (

>>11998790
>My impression is that the whole topic could be described in a contrast between a monistic (Hegelian) metaphysics and a dualistic (Platonic) one. The main feature of a monistic metaphysics is that everything is understood as part of the same entity (e.g. the Stoics) or as part of the same process (e.g. Hegel). There is no opposition of forces - or, if there is, it is comprehended in a historical monistic process leading toward one and only one end, namely, there are no multiple ends, there is no possible derailment from history (in this sense, Hegelian metaphysics can be seen as a “historicized version” of Stoic metaphysics).

pic rel. something happens between these two guys. yes, historically, there have been oscillating wars between the Confucians and the Taoists, but nothing you could call China depends upon an exclusion or an absolute domination of one by the other. and indeed, the essence of Xi Jinping thought today is *legalism* - that is, a complete fusion of the two of them. the origin and nature of justice itself follows from a sort of Taoist reading, the society produced thereby results in Confucianism. one problem, however: Legalism fucking *sucks.* it doesn't last long or work historically, and today it leads to the nightmare scenario, which is Social Credit/Nosedive. historically, unless i am mistaken, Han Fei winds up being run out of town on a rail.

but this is an important part also: Legalism itself grows out of the perceived failure of Confucianism. Legalism is basically the Chinese equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor: the molden gold and the crucible of cold iron. nobody has any doubts about Confucian virtue or the Way, it's that the Legalists say, well, *it's people that are the problem,* the people are too shitty. if this sounds familiar, it's because it's exactly how Land feels about Marxism too: the people are the problem, not Capital, and Capital is the real revolutionary process anyhow.

needless to say, that is not my own sense, all the way. my guy is Girard, and Girard is a kind of optimist-pessimist about these things. he's optimistic about human beings and pessimistic about politics to solve existential questions. but it's why i like Confucius also: virtue is the deal. and yet, of course, acceleration profoundly fucks with any such antiquated meatbag notions. which i might have been okay with, once, if i didn't think that it makes people (read: me) absolutely fucking freak out to contemplate.

Too many european edgy and cardboard dull semantic focused philosophers.

Why is everything socrates this, Nietzsche that, I want kant to sit on my face, etc.

What about the others?

Lao Tzu and confucius, etc.

Recommend me big brainy dudes that are underrated and/or non anglo/european.

>>11664653
isn't this sort of like the relationship between confucius and laozi? one sensibility for the urban, one for the country. complementary but not mutually exclusive.

>>11016538
this is an interesting post but i'm still not sure how what you have written is a criticism of confucianism.

basically - since i agree with pretty much everything you have said - this is my question:

>the human organism can only take a certain amount of pressure, and if you overdo it on one side it will balance it on the other. then, rituals will just be empty etiquette framing the inhumanity that will be necessary to survive in that industrial world

isn't the point then to understand the rituals as something other than an empty etiquette that frames the inhumanity necessary to survive? how can it be that a thing which frames the inhumanity necessary to survival be a thing which is simply empty etiquette?

if ritual is all that is there - and i am saying this because i believe that if you decentralize everything there will be chaos - the ritual has to be something other than empty etiquette and more of a necessary process of shared survival.

now nothing prevents us from saying, 'this is all so much empty etiquette.' but the question then becomes what we endorse instead or what alternative we will propose.

this is why the taoists are important in chinese culture. you can go and live on a farm, but life is hard there. however, if you want to live in the city, you have to abide by these rules.

in the west it seems to me that we are trying our own experiment in breaking these rules, claiming the individual over everything, but this leads to the cultural civil war we see on the news.

please understand that i don't have answers to these questions, nor do i think chinese authoritarianism is necessarily the answer to all the world's problems. i think it's more about the enlightenment of the individual, a person who can see things in terms other than self-and-other. but in some sense that is part of what confucius says about becoming a junzi in the doctrine of the mean.

>>11010530
>i doubt that this sacrifice would be overall beneficial for a nation in the long run. doesn't it create a nation of slaves? you'll say it might work on a small, village-like scale. well, it might do that.

in china at least this is why the conversation between confucius and laozi matters. the taoist political ideal is a small commune and not an imperial state.

>therefore the wise ruler does not suggest unnecessary things, but seeks to satisfy the minds of his people. He seeks to allay appetites but strengthen bones. He ever tries by keeping people in ignorance to keep them satisfied and those who have knowledge he restrains from evil. If he, himself, practices restraint then everything is in quietness.

this kind of stuff sounds, of course, like totalitarianism to us westies. keeping people in ignorance? how dare you! treating people as straw dogs? off with his head! but this is only a kind of superficial reading.

confucius is the scholar of the state for this reason, not laozi, but you'll see even there he strives to govern through implicit appeals to morality rather than the laws. this is where confucius and laozi will differ, because laozi is nearer to hakuin and the world of zen, where morality itself is a part of a topsy-turvy inside-out universe of cause-effect reversal and much else.

the ideal is a kind of small, village-like scale. extrapolate up from this and you inevitably need laws. much as socrates himself says, at the beginning of the republic: all you need, really, is a carpenter, a farmer, a couple other guys. but of course, we want more than that, we want rich food, jewelry, music...