Backlash wrote:
GlassMoon wrote:
Currently reading the Confucian classic that the excerpt on the left is from 🙂
I'm hardly a scholar of philosophy, but I get the hunch I'd be at odds with Confucius on pretty much everything he wrote. On the other hand, could you imagine a fantastic meeting between Laozi, Epicurus, and Diogenes the Cynic? Toss in Marx as their designated driver, and one might get something resembling my personal philosophy.
You've found a yin for the yang of my meme!
Those three you've drawn up are indeed interesting in that they came up with very similar practical solutions for how to live, but arrived at them through almost opposite means (a realist materialism for Epicurus vs. an obscurant mysticism for Laozi).
I can't really imagine being vigorously against Confucius myself, unless you just really, really hate the idea of hierarchy and social roles. Even then though, everything Confucius says is so lawful neutral that if anything his philosophy would be more troublesome from its plainness and seeming self-evidence than anything radical. I have a soft spot for his thought. It's interesting to me that Confucianism and Buddhism, the two most influential philosophies in east Asia, are on the one hand a grand embrace of selfhood* and on the other hand a grand denigration of it.**
*Although Confucius would have no patience for selfishness, he believes that finding our ground for excellence comes out of a deep analysis of our selves, or at least most of his interpreters do.
**Good luck finding any patience for the concept of a self, much less an exaltation of it, in Buddhism.
