At different times in Chinese history, Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE) has been portrayed as a teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher, reformer, and prophet. The name Confucius, a Latinized combination of the surname Kong 孔 with an honorific suffix “Master” (fuzi 夫子), has also come to be used as a global metonym for different aspects of traditional East Asian society. This association of Confucius with many of the foundational concepts and cultural practices in East Asia, and his casting as a progenitor of “Eastern” thought in Early Modern Europe, make him arguably the most significant thinker in East Asian history. Yet while early sources preserve biographical details about Master Kong, dialogues and stories about him in early texts like the Analects (Lunyu 論語) reflect a diversity of representations and concerns, strands of which were later differentially selected and woven together by interpreters intent on appropriating or condemning particular associated views and traditions. This means that the philosophy of Confucius is historically underdetermined, and it is possible to trace multiple sets of coherent doctrines back to the early period, each grounded in different sets of classical sources and schools of interpretation linked to his name.
At times, the phrase benevolence and righteousness is used metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, a benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are seen as potentially contradictory. In the Analects, portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:
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In regulating ones household, kindness overrules righteousness. Outside of ones house, righteousness cuts off kindness. What one undertakes in serving ones father, one also does in serving ones lord, because ones reverence for both is the same. Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. (Sangfu sizhi ) While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life.
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While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a gentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areas of life, a third virtue of ritual propriety expresses a sensitivity to ones social place, and willingness to play all of ones multiple ritual roles. The term li translated here as ritual propriety has a particularly wide range of connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions of ritual and etiquette. In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-black trim (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection for ginger (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to Confucius. His imperative, Do not look or listen, speak or move, unless it is in accordance with the rites (12.1), in answer to a question about benevolenc
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We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. In the Analects, Confucius says he cannot tolerate ritual without reverence, or mourning without grief, (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual propriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners distress is more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of ritual
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