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0:13
when i told all my friends that i was making a video to teach people about confucius they all had the exact same response they all said ooh that sounds interesting i've heard of confucius but i don't know anything about it and i was like yeah me neither when i did my philosophy degree nobody taught us about confucius but he's part of the cultural legacy of like a third of the world's people so i thought that alone is a good enough reason to take a look but the more i researched and read the
0:43
more i realized that confucius is actually incredibly relevant to everything that's going on in the world right now he was born at the tail end of the zhou dynasty in 551 bc so absolutely ages ago and they had a big problem back then which was that society was slowly falling apart china as we know it did not exist yet it was a bunch of semi-independent states run by noble families and officially they ruled on behalf of the king but like [Music] they had a fully sophisticated
1:19
government structure with different ministers and departments and officials and they had a whole load of rules but at the same time if you were rich enough you could kind of just do whatever and nobody could stop you like in confucius's home state of lou the zhang family were officially in charge but everybody knew you don't cross the g family the g family did all the important sacrifices the chief minister was always mysteriously from the g they threw all the biggest parties and
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they hired their own security and eventually this massive corruption and open contempt for the rules of society by the people at the top started threatening the whole system people got sick of it they were like why should we follow the rules if the bloody g family don't have to but there wasn't anything they could do about it from within the system so it looked like there was no solution that didn't involve violence and into this mess he's born confucius and he says
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lads i think i know how to fix this [Music]
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[Music]
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the oldest source we have for confucius's ideas is a book called the analects which is also my primary source for today it's divided into short books and chapters each of which is a little saying the master said the gentleman is easy of mind well the small man is always full of anxiety the master said the gentleman understands what is moral the small man understands what is profitable the master said a goo that is not a proper goo is it really a goo is it really a goo
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the analect was put together decades or possibly centuries after confucius died allegedly by his disciples there are later books attributed to him or in which he appears as a character but as far as we know we don't have anything written by the man himself at time of recording i say at time of recording because one of the awesome things about ancient philosophy is we could find a zhou dynasty tomb tomorrow with some scrolls in it that totally revolutionizes everything
3:57
we think we know about confucius the whole field can and does change overnight people have been writing commentaries on the analects for thousands of years and every commentator brings their own spin to it as a result of the context they're living in that includes by the way me so just bear in mind that the true meaning of the text if there is such a thing is not as interesting as what we can do with it now even his name confucius is a later interpretation it's actually a latinization of
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kong fuji which means grand master kong [Music] [Applause] so before we get to anything else obviously this was written in chinese what the hell is a goo now the cambridge chinese to english dictionary defines goo as we have stolen your dictionary nerd send us bitcoin if you ever want to see it again but even knowing that definition it still feels like i'm missing some context to be fair plato and aristotle or any of the other ancient philosophers that get studied a lot in the west
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didn't write in modern english either but chinese can be especially tricky because it doesn't have an alphabet the way english or ancient greek do take the english word alphabet we know that a means an a sound l is a sound ph is f so you see the whole word and you go far right chinese characters on the other hand do not represent sounds they represent syllables and occasionally entire words the advantage of this system is you can write a lot of information in just a tiny amount of space
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european monks are writing out the bible one letter at a time on vellum meanwhile in china i've made 500 copies and written a novel before i've even had lunch one scroll bam done and get this spelling changes a lot faster than characters do ever tried to read the canterbury tales incomprehensible and that was only written 600 years ago whereas if you know traditional chinese characters you can find an ancient scroll in a tomb and read it but the downside is this this character means electricity
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or thunderstorm or lightning or electric and this means brain which itself is a combination of characters including flesh clever and think put the two together and you have
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it's just the chinese word for computer can you guess the problem philosophy tends to use extremely technical and specific language and occasionally invents entirely new concepts and if you're translating you want to capture the nuances without making it cumbersome like clever thunderstorm flesh that thinks so there's a lot of haggling over precise wording here's a controversial example analects 4 15 says the way of the master consists in zhong and shu that is all okay
7:24
good to know if we can figure out what zhong and shu mean then we've cracked it so what do they mean well zhang has been translated as loyalty respect reverence doing your best and devotion among other things and shu has been translated as reciprocity altruism forgiveness consideration and occasionally the entire phrase do unto others as you would have them do unto you [Music] okay the cambridge chinese to english dictionary defines shu as seriously if you ever want to see your dictionary again
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transfer bitcoin by tomorrow which again is a completely different meaning for the last two and a half thousand years different philosophers have had subtly different interpretations to the point where if you pick up a copy of the analects today it might seem weird and even contradictory because it could be a mishmash of different translations some people have even turned around and blamed chinese philosophers for being vague and weird when really the problem could be that the text
8:35
has been distorted the chinese never had a secular enlightenment and that's why you can't understand a bloody word they're saying chinese philosophers simply never had the rigorous commitment to logic and truth that their counterparts did in the west and the fun doesn't stop there let's say we translate zhang as devotion okay confucius wants us to be devoted to what though to other people to the country to tradition you've kind of got to read the rest to figure it out and that only
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multiplies the problem and shu do unto others as you would have them do unto you you might recognize that phrase from the bible or the torah or the hadith it's the so-called golden rule of morality and there's a lot of argument over how exactly you're supposed to translate it is it do unto others as you would have them do unto you or is it do not do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you because those are not the same thing the first one is actually a lot more
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demanding if i have to do unto you what i would want then i have to help you when you're in trouble but if it's just hey don't treat anybody how you wouldn't want to be treated then well all i have to do is leave you alone there's been a lot of argument about whether confucius is golden rule is the easy version or the hard version some people have said it's definitely the easy one and that's evidence for chinese ethics somehow not being as good the chinese never had a secular
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enlightenment which is why they're all a bunch of heartless bastards unlike great britain the most ethical country the world has ever known but there's also a pretty convincing case to be made that the man himself wouldn't have made that distinction in the first place and just to put the cherry on the top alex 415 says the way of the master consists in zhong and shu that is all it says that is all so that's got to be the most important bit right of course we're going to spend hundreds
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of years writing loads of papers on it and arguing about it but what if analytics 415 isn't actually canon translator and philosopher brian van norden thinks it was added later and if we take that bit out then suddenly zhong and xu aren't the key to unlocking confucius they're just another part of it god damn it fetch me my lara croft costume we're gonna have to raid some serious tombs to get to the bottom of this one bottom line confucius is difficult and there are literally millennia worth
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of commentary on it to the point where i could make 10 videos on the guy and still not cover it all so with that in mind i want to focus down on one aspect of his work in particular the jordan peterson
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a concept that comes up a lot in confucius is lee which is usually translated as rituals like i said at the top ancient china had a lot of rules rules about when you're supposed to bow what sorts of clothes you're supposed to wear on what days there was a lot of ritual sacrifice there were rules about what music could be played and when some elites at the top of society liked to play a little fast and loose with the rituals like the bloody g family and often in the analects confucius
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stresses the importance of following the master said do not look unless it is in accordance with the rituals do not listen unless it is in accordance with the rituals do not speak unless it is in accordance with the rituals do not move unless it is in accordance with the rituals and when i first read that i found it quite tough to imagine myself into that headspace because i don't really think of our society as having a lot of rituals like that and then i realized that we kind of do
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we've got little ones like covering your mouth when you yawn or saying excuse me when you burp lee doesn't just mean like religious services there's a dimension to it that's like etiquette and propriety as well it's a motorbike and then i realized that we sure do have some big rituals here at parliament the british parliament is an ingenious work of british geniusness made up of two houses both alike in dignity the house of commons and the house of lords the british by their nature
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loathe tyranny and embrace freedom which is why the house of lords is completely unelected whenever a new parliament begins her majesty the queen gives a speech from the house of lords which has itself been written by the members of the house of commons the senior officer of the house of lords who is referred to by the title black god is sent from the lords to the commons to invite the members to hear what her majesty has to say even though they already know what she
13:41
has to say because they wrote it and when black god arrives at the commons they slam the door in his face and then they open the door again and they all go and hear the speech anyway this eminently sensible and really quite simple procedure is designed to illustrate that the commons is independent from the monarchy but not so independent that they'll get rid of her it may appear to be an enormous waste of money and time
14:37
the state opening of parliament is a ritual that doesn't really affect the system all that much it's more of a symbol but there are some parliamentary rituals that really do make a massive difference to what happens in there and therefore out here for instance if you're an mp you have to use what they call parliamentary language and that can be pretty strict you cannot call people liars or hypocrites or corrupt in 2016 an mp named dennis skinner called then prime minister david cameron
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dodgy dave and he was suspended for it in 2019 ian blackford called boris johnson a racist and it was only barely allowed and even then he had to warn boris beforehand and to my mind there's two ways of looking at this the first is to say well what if an mp is dodgy or is racist don't we need to be able to say it if mps are bound by all these rituals then doesn't that mean that there are certain realities the government cannot face certain perspectives the house just cannot accommodate
15:42
no matter how much the people might want them to be doesn't that guarantee that the government will always be a little bit out of touch or inflexible or even undemocratic you can even take it one step further and say all these rituals just protect the status quo and perpetuate the current unjust way of doing things isn't it a bit of a bad joke that members abide by all these civilized rules inside whilst outside people are really dying as a result of their decisions
16:06
aren't the rituals just a hypocritical gloss over what is in reality quite a bloody business the flower that hides the serpent under it doesn't it piss you off that they play nice with each other but some of them are so rich and powerful they can just flout the rules that the rest of us have to live by i mean who do they think they are the bloody g family and if that's you then yeah i'm not going to say that you're wrong mate but confucius at least didn't think that was actually going to
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solve the problem so he tried a different approach confucius was a rue which was a job kind of like a civil servant if you're a rue you would travel round the various states doing government odd jobs like maybe you become an advisor to the local duke maybe you get put in charge of a big ceremony maybe you control when the crops get planted now to be a rue you had to know all the rules of how everything's supposed to work not just the practical government rules but also
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all of the li the rituals the rue were experts in the details of the conventions of funerals of daily contexts such as eating and gift exchange and of other significant ritual locations proper ritual performance was seen as both a means to cultivate moral character and as a legitimator of political authority for these reasons rue was sought out to serve in official capacities for the landed gentry of the central states of early china apparently rue also translates as moist
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skin care is important the cambridge chinese to english dictionary defines rue as seriously who quotes the dictionary in their video essays amateur move lol send bitcoin confucius was apparently really good at being a roo he knew all the rituals where everyone's supposed to stand when the music is supposed to be played he knew how things were done in the good old days under the sage kings when the zhou dynasty was really something and he was highly sought as a teacher
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for young men who wanted to be rue because of his emphasis on ritual and tradition confucius has a reputation for being a rigid conformist the chinese never had a secular enlightenment which is why they're bound by obsolete traditions and an obsession with the past unlike great britain where if you say anything bad about churchill i'll have you but confucius wasn't totally inflexible he says it's fine to deviate and change things if it's in keeping with the spirit of the ritual
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and that's the kicker he's very critical of those who go through all the right procedures but they don't have the right spirit like the bloody g family you don't use the rituals to make yourself feel big and important mr g it's about having respect he wanted people to follow the rituals so they would learn good character and that's not just good for you it's good for everybody like the rituals at parliament yeah okay maybe sometimes strong language is called for and it's a
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drawback that mps can't use it but the purpose of that ritual is supposed to be that you respect the person you're speaking to if not the person themselves then at least the office they hold whatever personal grievances you have whatever the issue of the day is whether your side is winning or losing there is supposed to be something more important which is the role of the house itself and ultimately democracy you've got to respect that higher order because it is in a word
19:45
sacred confucius is kind of on some jordan peterson in a way he's like you gotta respect all these values and these norms that are encoded in the rituals and the stories of our ancient forefathers it's all part of our society and it's the values that undergird everything and you gotta respect that you gotta master all these traditions you gotta stand up and take some responsibility and put your shoulders back and it's such a shame that we're losing these valleys
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that underground society and the show dynasties falling apart it's up to you you've got to stand up and defend the east against all that's going on unlike jordan peterson though the sacred higher order confucius is gesturing towards isn't necessarily a religious one the analects uses this character tian a lot which is usually translated as heaven and that has made some western commentators very excited because they're like oh wow confucius believes in heaven that means
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that we can convert the chinese to christianity the chinese never had a secular enlightenment which is why we have to teach them about the greatest englishman of all time jesus but from the context it seems like he's using tian more to mean fate or destiny or the universe not so much a personal god the cambridge chinese to english dictionary defines tian as i'm sorry i stole your dictionary i'm going through some stuff right now but it wasn't okay to take it out on you
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i did lose the book down a storm drain but now that i've actually watched your videos i decided to subscribe hit the bell and sign up to your patreon confucius is certainly less mystical than the buddhists and the taoists who were also kicking around at this time he's not saying you have to follow the rituals because god says so he thought that if kings and dukes and officials could be inspired to follow the rituals cultivate good character and do their jobs with respect it would inspire
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everyone else and that's how we fix a broken society just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good the virtue of the gentleman is like wind the virtue of the small man is like grass let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend to govern is to correct if you set an example by being correct who would dare to remain incorrect also unlike jordan peterson confucius didn't think that following the rituals and cultivating good character
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would necessarily benefit you a lot of the advice he gives seems to me to be aimed at young men and they were men starting out in their careers as roux there's stuff in here about not comparing yourself to others and taking on responsibility you know the sort of thing that you'd want to hear if you were just beginning a new job and you weren't really sure of yourself and he also says hey i know that you'll worry about whether you're advancing in your career or falling behind
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but you've got to understand it's not about you [Music] heaven has given you a gift it's this thing and this thing and those are not for you they're not so you can profit they're for everybody if you really want to hone your gift and maximize your potential you've got to use it to serve other people the whole idea of individual benefit as opposed to the common good doesn't really fit with confucius's whole system that's why his ethics and his politics are the same thing when he talks about
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the glue that holds society together it's not laws and individual rights the way we might think of it now it's playing well with others and the way you practice that is with the rituals so confucius wanted to remind everybody why these traditions mattered and crucially if he could remind the guys in government why they mattered maybe things would get better and that's pretty understandable right faced with a society that was slowly falling apart with elites who openly broke the rules
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for their own profit and got away with it you can see why he was like well we got to remind everybody why all this stuff is important
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too bad it didn't work [Music] fast forward a couple hundred years to another philosopher called junsu he was a confucian he picked up all that stuff about following the rituals and cultivating virtue but he was even less spiritual he actually says yeah forget about the spirits and astrology and comets and omens let's think about crops yeah let's think about food real stuff follow the rituals yeah absolutely but just don't have your head in the clouds about it the point is to change yourself
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to correct yourself and here we start seeing a bit of a shift in how the concept of lee rituals is used when confucius talks about lee he emphasizes self-control and cultivating the virtues and setting a good example when junzu talks about lee he's talking about it being enforced crooked wood must be heated and bent before it becomes straight blunt metal must be ground and wetted before it becomes sharp the nature of man is evil it must depend on teachers and
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laws to become correct and achieve lee and then it becomes disciplined without teachers and laws he is unbalanced off the track and incorrect without lee there will be rebellion disorder and chaos the sage kings of antiquity knowing that the nature of man is evil and that it is unbalanced off the track incorrect rebellious disorderly and undisciplined created lee and instituted laws and systems in order to correct man's feelings transform them and direct them so that they may all
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become disciplined that idea that human nature is evil isn't in the analects confucius is kind of ambiguous on that question it's a later idea and it caught on junzu had an apprentice han fey and he wasn't a confucian he was a legalist the legalists were a group of thinkers who didn't have time for all this virtue and wisdom sh that's not how you run a country you run a country by running it with laws and agriculture and crossbows what is called wisdom consists of subtle and unfathomable
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doctrines such subtle and unfathomable doctrines are difficult even for men of the highest intelligence to understand if what men of the highest intelligence find to be difficult to understand is used to make laws for the people the people will find them impossible to understand the legalists said forget about setting a good example a ruler rules a country with two things reward and punishment mainly punishment they wanted an end to this endless bickering between states we need
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one strong central authority to keep everyone in line and make everything nice and simple now we in the freedom-loving milk drinking individualistic 21st century might look back and say how on earth could they ever have thought that was a good idea the chinese never had a secular enlightenment which is why they had an iron fisted empire instead of the friendly kind of nice empire that we had but of course the legalists didn't see it that way they thought of it in terms of accuracy
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and practicality and efficiency we want to actually win battles by attacking when we're ready instead of waiting for our opponent we want laws that actually apply to everybody we want standardized weights and measurements and a standardized alphabet so everybody knows where they stand we've seen what happens when rulers try to do the virtuous confusion they go low we go high thing all it takes is a handful of clowns like the bloody g family to decide they're going to
28:01
obstruct everything until they get their way and the whole system collapses so no more basing your ideas on ancient rituals or sage kings let's get some goddamn results and they did the state of chin really took this stuff on board and when society eventually collapsed enough to enter what historians call the warring states period the king of chin kicked everyone's ass and united the states into a single new country which he called chin nice and simple easy to pronounce i bet no one's ever
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gonna get that wrong and then now officially the first emperor chin ji huang he said folks we're gonna build a wall a beautiful great wall on our northern border and i am going to make mongolia pay for that wall and then he died an fbi
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the chin dictatorship only lasted 15 years they were very unpopular and they pretty swiftly got booted out and roundly vilified by history but not before they killed a lot of confucian scholars and burned a lot of books so what happened what happened to inspiration and virtue and setting a good example why didn't it work i mean to be fair confucius did have a massive impact on the rest of chinese history to the point where even into the 20th century chinese philosophers were writing their
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ideas as commentaries on confucius but at the same time the zhou dynasty did not survive modern chinese philosophers especially since the cultural revolution have asked is confucius still relevant and hey i'm not a historian but one thing that does stand out to me is that confucius system is very moralistic he's like hey things will get better if we can just raise awareness and get people to behave more morally and the way we do that is with the rituals so it's worth asking
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if everybody on planet earth woke up tomorrow and was like 50 more moral whatever that means right like more compassionate less quick to anger more concerned with the welfare of others however you want to cash out tomorrow morning everybody wakes up like 50 better would that actually solve the problems would that solve global warming would it solve homelessness or police brutality and the rise of fascism i mean don't get me wrong it might make people more inclined to do the things that
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would help but then why don't we just focus on doing those things i mean to be fair to the grandmaster that is a very modern criticism it's informed by hundreds of years worth of theory and evidence that he didn't have access to so it's kind of cheating but it is something that just stood out to me presumably people in confucius's time were sick of the state of things the way that a lot of us are sick of it now politicians being openly corrupt and hypocritical
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rich people not doing their fair share elites looking the other way when someone breaks the rules but it's one of their friends who does it we go through the rituals but it doesn't seem to work anymore there don't seem to be any consequences for those that don't and confucius's response was to try and breathe life back into the rituals to get people to reinvest in them give them a story about their lives in a place in the world that they could connect to and it maybe
31:29
didn't work out the way that he wanted it to but you know philosophy doesn't have to work for it to be illuminating or for it to be responding to a genuine emotional need i feel like if nothing else there's something comforting in knowing that you are not the first person to live through times like these yeah crazy colors on my plate and dirty dishes on my day i gotta do something [Music]
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um
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[Music] hey
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[Music]
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every time i'm done [Music]
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[Music]
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[Music] cause it's a cold day outside [Music]
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sparkling
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[Music]
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[Music] lord
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