[In the following essay, Weiming identifies what he considers the fundamentals of Confucianism and examines Confucius as a spiritual leader and teacher.]

Writing in the 1950s, Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher noted for his idea of the “axial age” civilizations, chose Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus as the most significant shapers of the human form of life.¹ In supporting his claim, he offered the following justification:

These four paradigmatic individuals have exerted a historical influence of incomparable scope and depth. Other men of great stature may have been equally important for smaller groups, but when it comes to broad, enduring influence over many hundreds of years, they are so far above all others that they must be singled out if we are to form a clear view of the world's history.²

To our pluralistic ear, Jaspers' assertion seems arbitrary. We may argue that the list should be expanded to include at least Moses, Muhammad, Laozi, and a host of other spiritual leaders. With our learned sensitivity to the importance of gender and multiculturalism, we may also doubt the validity of drawing up such a short, exclusivist list in the first place. The unintended negative consequences for those who are marginalized and silenced may be too costly to make such an intellectual exercise worthwhile. The charge of elitism appears undeniable.

Without a touch of irony, however, what Jaspers intended to convey was far from being exclusive or elitist. Rather, it was an inclusive vision rooted in a pluralistic conception of the human condition:

No single type can account for these four men. Their historicity and consequent uniqueness can be perceived only within the all-embracing historicity of humanity, which in each of them expressed itself in a wholly different way. To discover this common root has been possible only since mankind has achieved a unity of communication and the different cultures have learned of each other's crucial individuals.³

It was truly exceptional that after World War II, while many European and American philosophers became narrowly focused on the “local knowledge” of the modern West, Jaspers broadened his horizon to encompass South and East Asia and recognized the centrality of Buddha and Confucius for human self-reflexivity. He exemplified an ecumenical and cosmopolitan spirit rare and refreshing in twentieth-century academic discourse.

By contrast, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers—notably Voltaire, Rousseau, and Leibniz—all took China as a major reference society and Confucianism as the single most important reference culture. In the eyes of the European philosophers, the presumed Confucian rationalism, civility, and humanism were surely reflections of their critique of the theocentric worldview, only tangentially related to their genuine interest in searching for alternative visions of society, but they were fascinated by the Chinese social ethic and style of governance—a moral order independent from religion and faith in God. In the nineteenth century, with the advent of Hegel's philosophy of the spirit, all non-Western “axial age” civilizations (Indian, Persian, Chinese, and so forth) were relegated to the dawn of history. The belief that the sun of the Spirit will eventually set in the modern West was further enhanced by the Comtean idea of progress (which tracked human thought from religion to philosophy and then to science) and the Marxist notion of historical inevitability (from feudalism to capitalism and then to socialism). Many other currents of thought contributed to this secular, if not scientistic, interpretation of world history. The idea of material progress as the sole criterion for human flourishing is so ingrained in the modern mind-set, East and West, that for decades the mainstream of contemporary philosophy has deliberately ignored all the spiritual traditions as irrelevant to rigorous analytical thinking. The situation has only begun to change in the last years of the twentieth century.

We hope that a resurgence of scholarly reflections on the “axial age” civilizations—as well as the prevailing interest in indigenous cultures and an open-minded attitude toward different worldviews and faith communities—will be cultivated in schools, churches, families, and the mass media, despite inter- and intra-religious tension and conflict. Indeed, Jaspers' observation that “in an early day, each one [Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus] was the only crucial individual for large parts of mankind, and as a matter of fact has remained so even since the others became known”⁴ bodes well for a newly emerging dialogue between civilizations. It is in this dialogical spirit that Confucius, as a “father of faith,” is worth our attention.

CONFUCIUS AS SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS LEADER

At first blush, it is difficult to convey the sense that Confucius was a great spiritual and religious leader with profound concerns for the ultimate. The clear separation between religion and philosophy that resulted from a taxonomy in modern academic disciplines is partly responsible for our inability to think religiously about Confucius. The restricted definition of religion that requires an element of transcendence as the radical otherness is also an important reason for our failure to appreciate the religious dimension in the Confucian tradition. If we approach philosophy as a way of life, as Pierre Hadot urges us to do, the “spiritual exercises” embodied in the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans are deeply and authentically religious. However, if we insist that belief in the monotheistic God as understood in the three Abrahamic religions is the defining characteristic of religion, then Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shintoism, and Taoism will all lose their legitimacy in an interreligious dialogue. The very nature of the Confucian mode of thinking complicates the picture and adds subtlety to comparative civilizational studies.

The following exchange in the Analects is heuristically valuable as a point of departure for our inquiry:

Zilu asked how to serve the spirits and gods. The Master said: “You are not yet able to serve men, how could you serve the spirits?” Zilu said: “May I ask you about death?” The Master said: “You do not yet know life, how could you know death?

(11.12)⁵

Under the influence of modern secular humanism, many a contemporary Chinese interpreter proudly announced that Confucius, by focusing his attention exclusively on human life, clearly indicated that he was an atheistic, this-worldly humanist with no concern for the transcendent realm or the afterlife. However, a more nuanced reading of the same passage, fully supported by intertextual evidence and the context of the Confucian discourse, reveals at least three layers of meaning embedded in the exchange:

1. If we cannot serve human beings, it is premature for us to serve the spirits; if we don't know about life, it is premature for us to know death;

2. If we can serve humans well, we may earn the trust to serve spirits properly; if we understand life sufficiently, we may have the wisdom to know about death as well; and

3. A comprehensive way of serving humankind requires that we serve the spirits; a full understanding of life demands that we understand death.

This three-layered interpretation is compatible with Confucius' idea of filial piety: Serve your parents with propriety when they are alive, bury them with propriety when they die, and remember them after death with propriety by regular rituals. (2.5) Accordingly, the mourning rituals for the dead and the rituals for the veneration of ancestral spirits are the most revered in the Confucian tradition.

How do we account for the general misunderstanding that Confucianism is primarily a form of secular humanism—a social ethic committed to the betterment of the world here and now? Max Weber's characterization of Confucianism as of-this-world is a case in point. Unlike in so-called otherworldly religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity, the Confucian life-orientation takes the “lifeworld”—ordinary human existence—as its point of departure and primary intellectual and spiritual concern. The Buddhist idea of the “other shore” or the Christian promise of the Kingdom of God is absent in the Confucian reservoir of spiritual resources. This conscious refusal, rather than unintended deficiency, to create a spiritual sanctuary outside the mundane world of economy, politics, and society is predicated on a strong faith in our capacity for transforming the human condition through our own personal effort. Confucius was the exemplary teacher for what Herbert Fingarette characterizes as “the secular as sacred.”⁶

Kong Qiu (551-479 b.c.e.) was known among his students and admirers as Kongzi, or Master Kong. He was later honored as Kong Fuzi (Master-Teacher Kong), which became the basis of the Latinized form Confucius. It is common in the West to acknowledge the importance of Confucius as the founder of a school or religion by designating the scholarly tradition that he identified himself with as Confucianism. Strictly speaking, Confucius was neither the founder of Confucianism nor the highest manifestation of the Confucian ideal. Confucius self-consciously defined himself as a “transmitter.” (7.1) The tradition that he intended to transmit was the scholarly tradition commonly known as ru. The highest personality-ideal for the ru was the sage-king. Confucius never claimed that he had attained sagehood. He was of course not a king. In the East Asian order of things, Confucianism, like the outmoded term Muhammadanism, is a misnomer, a cultural construction of the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. However, for the sake of convenience in the English-speaking community, we will continue to use terms such as Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, and New Confucianism.⁷

Confucius lived in a place and time of political turmoil, social disintegration, and cultural crisis. His life history, woven into the richly textured tapestry of the eventful Spring and Autumn period (722-497 b.c.e.), is replete with fascinating anecdotes. Many are meaningful legends and revealing myths, but the basic events of his biography are well documented. Confucius is a historical figure, and the sayings attributed to him in the Analects are most likely veritable records transmitted by the first generation of his disciples. Several of his students were politically prominent and historically significant. New evidence of the earliest transmission of the Confucian teaching is available thanks to bamboo strips (more than eight hundred items containing over thirteen thousand characters) discovered in Jingmen near Wuhan (China's Chicago) in 1993. The development of the Confucian Way—from the Master to Mencius (c. 371-c. 289 b.c.e.) and Xunzi (fl. 310-219 b.c.e.), two of the great molders of the Confucian Way in ancient China—is no longer a total mystery. These supposedly fourth-century b.c.e. or earlier texts provide an invaluable guide to the evolution of the Confucian tradition in antiquity.

As voices of the first generation of Confucius' disciples become audible, a “thick description” of the general contour of the Confucian conversation is no longer guesswork colored by wishful thinking. The historicity of Confucius, while always subject to interpretation, has never been a serious issue in sinological discussion. In the twentieth century, even the most iconoclastic interpreters of China's past have not doubted the existence of the Master. The full-length biography of Confucius compiled by the great historian Sima Qian in his monumental Historical Memoirs, written in the first century b.c.e., while containing some obvious and acknowledged hagiographic accounts, is a veritable portrayal of Confucius the man and the consequential lore surrounding him.

Confucius was born into a family of lesser nobility in 551 b.c.e., when the glorious Zhou dynasty had virtually lost its “Mandate of Heaven.” His native land, the feudal state of Lu, was noted for its faithful continuation of Zhou civilization, but it suffered from presumptuous and weak leadership. The endemic warfare as the rulers of powerful states contended for territory and influence undermined any hope of restoring the peace and prosperity of a unified kingdom. Confucius lost his father at the age of three. Although reared by his mother under straitened circumstances, he was able to pursue learning according to his own inclination. As a boy he was fond of performing ceremonial acts as a pastime. Like his father, who was a warrior, Confucius grew into a large man with great physical strength. He was married at nineteen and produced a son and two daughters. To support his family, he entered into the service of a noble clan as a caretaker of parks and herds.

CONFUCIUS THE TEACHER

Confucius' vocation as a teacher began at thirty-two when he became a tutor for a nobleman's sons. During his trip to Loyang, the eastern capital of the declining Zhou dynasty, he observed firsthand the ritual and music of the imperial court. Two years later, he accompanied the prince of Lu to a neighboring state and furthered his own education in ritual and music with accomplished masters. Confucius had the opportunity to listen to the elegant performance of the ancient music of Shao. He later recalled that he was in such a state of aesthetic ecstasy that he did not recognize the taste of meat for three months. (7.14) Returning home, he devoted the next fifteen years to study. Through ritual practice, the distinctive Confucian style of spiritual exercises involving daily self-examination, mindfulness in each social encounter, constant alertness in dealing with the world around, remembrance of ancient examples of the Way, and taut appreciation of the decrees of Heaven, he became a transmitter of cultural values, a moral teacher, and a learner of wisdom. We presume that it was in this period that he acquired an experiential understanding and a holistic appreciation of the classical scholars' tradition, encompassing poetry, history, metaphysics, rites, and music. Informed by a comprehensive humanist vision and encouraged by the relevance of his study to the urgent task at hand—bringing peace and prosperity to the whole populace through self-cultivation—he realized the potency of sagacious learning as the art of governance.

In his early fifties, Confucius reentered politics, first as minister of justice and then as the chief minister of the state of Lu. He is said to have helped the prince overcome the divisive forces of the nobles by developing an effective administrative structure based on the ritual order of the Zhou dynasty. Unfortunately, his brilliant career lasted only four years. Jealous of his power and influence, Confucius' enemies employed devious means to undermine his cordial relationship with the prince. When the prince began to excessively indulge in the singing and dancing beauties presented to him by a rival state, Confucius reluctantly left his beloved motherland. Accompanied by a coterie of disciples, he wandered about the country for twelve years in search of a receptive ruler who would put his ideas into practice.

Notwithstanding his failure to establish political order through rites and music, he created a symbolic universe in which transmitted cultural values, educated moral order, and learned wisdom gave rise to an “imagined community”—the fellowship he formed with the seventy or so core members and an estimated three thousand students—more influential and enduring than any existing centers of wealth and power. A hermit once said of Confucius: “Is that not the man who knows that it cannot be done and yet cannot but do it?”⁸ (14.38) Indeed, Confucius, being critically aware of the primacy of the political order, fully acknowledged the futility of changing the rules of the game, which were defined in terms of wealth and power. Yet, prompted by a profound sense of mission, he embarked on a joint venture to educate the world. Of course he worried about political instability and social disintegration, but he was acutely conscious of the fact that the problem is more deeply rooted: “Failure to cultivate moral power, failure to explore what I have learned, incapacity to stand by what I know to be right, incapacity to reform what is not good—these are my worries.” (7.3) The tension between his realistic appraisal of the objective situation and his indefatigable commitment to improving the human condition generated a great deal of creative energy among his followers.

Throughout his life Confucius never lost confidence in his calling as a “minister of the moral order.” Nor did he ever doubt that his philosophy of self-cultivation was politically efficacious. Since he strongly believed that “Heaven invested me with moral power,” (7.23) he boldly asserted that what he did in the privacy of his own home had profound political implications. (2.21) This was by no means hubris, for Confucius clearly acknowledged: “For my part, I am not endowed with innate knowledge. I am simply a man who loves the past and who is diligent in investigating it.” (7.20) Indeed, he confessed that “he is the sort of man who, in his enthusiasm, forgets to eat, in his joy forgets to worry, and who ignores the approach of old age.” (7.19) When the Duke Jing of Qi asked Confucius about government, he answered straightforwardly: “Let the lord be a lord; the subject be a subject; the father a father; the son a son.” This deceptively simple recommendation, based on the principle of the “rectification of names,” (13.3) suggests an approach to politics: It is not the mechanism of power relationships but the art of exemplary leadership that defines good governance.

LEARNING AS LIVING

At the age of sixty-eight, Confucius—having occasionally cried out, “Let us go home, let us go home!” (5.22) so that he could refine the learning of his talented disciples—returned to his motherland and spent his last years quietly writing, editing, and teaching. The subjects on which Confucius most often discoursed were poetry, history, and the performance of rites. (7.18) His teaching primarily consisted of four subjects: literature, conduct, loyalty, and truthfulness.⁹ (7.25) He proposed that personal cultivation is “first inspired with poetry, then made firm by the performance of rites, and finally completed by music.”¹⁰ (8.8) Confucius envisioned education as a dynamic process—open, continuous, transformative, and creative. It is a combination of and an interplay between learning and thinking: “To study without thinking is futile. To think without studying is dangerous.” (2.15) While he covered a variety of disciplines in his teaching, he had “one single thread running through it.” (4.15) He once remarked that perhaps reciprocity can serve as a principle for the conduct of life (14.25): “Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you!”¹¹ (12.2)

The Confucian golden rule, deliberately stated in the negative, is predicated on the belief that cultivating empathy, the ability to put oneself in the place of the significant other, requires critical self-awareness: I may not know him (or her) to the extent and in the degree that I ought to know myself. Therefore, I should not presume that I know what is best for the other. This further implies that, for my self-knowledge, I must learn to understand others in their own terms. This nuanced understanding of interpersonal communication is illustrated in the following exchange: When someone asked Confucius about the merit of repaying hatred with kindness, Confucius retorted, “And with what will you repay kindness?” He then suggested, “Repay hatred with justice, and kindness with kindness.” (14.34)

Confucius died at the age of seventy-three (479 b.c.e.). In what Irene Bloom describes as “the world's shortest autobiography,”¹² Confucius recalled his spiritual self-transformation:

At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning;
At thirty, I took my stand;
At forty, I had no longer doubts;
At fifty, I knew the will of Heaven;
At sixty, my ear was attuned;
At seventy, I follow all the desires of my heart without breaking any rule.

His commitment to learning as a teenager signifies the centrality of self-cultivation as a continuous spiritual exercise during his entire life. Indeed, Confucius defined himself as a lover of learning: “In a hamlet of ten houses, you will certainly find people as loyal and faithful as I, but you will not find one man who loves learning as much as I do.” (5:28) His passion for learning was rooted in a critical awareness that all virtues must be cultivated like “carving horn, like sculpting ivory, like cutting jade, like polishing stone.” (1.15) Without constant effort, none of the virtues can be truly embodied as an inner quality of one's being. The love of learning is an essential aspect of learning to be fully human:

The love of humanity without the love of learning degenerates into silliness. The love of intelligence without the love of learning degenerates into frivolity. The love of chivalry without the love of learning degenerates into banditry. The love of frankness without the love of learning degenerates into brutality. The love of valor without the love of learning degenerates into violence. The love of force without the love of learning degenerates into anarchy.

(17.8)

THE CONFUCIAN WAY

The Confucian Way is not an external reality or an abstract principle but a personal, concrete, and practical approach to life. However, this highly contextualized and individuated “method of humanity” is also intended to be universally applicable to all specific circumstances of the human condition. Learning to be fully human, in the Confucian sense, requires that we make our body healthy, heart-mind sensitive, and soul-spirit brilliant. Implicit in this mode of thinking is a holistic conception of embodiment. The health of the body, the sensitivity of the heart-mind, and the brilliance of the soul-spirit are interrelated in self-cultivation. The six arts in Confucian elementary education—ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and arithmetic—are mental as well as physical exercises. Indeed, the exclusive nitive dimensions of the heart-mind. Similarly, only when our feeling and thinking are refined are we in tune with our soul-spirit. This is the Confucian Way.

The Confucian statement, “In the morning hear the Way, in the evening die content,” (4.8) might give the wrong impression that the joy of discovering the Way, like sudden enlightenment, is totally unexpected. As the pronouncement, “Man can enlarge the Way. It is not the Way that enlarges man,” (15.29) unequivocally indicates, it is through human participation that the Way manifests itself in its full potency. Far from being an unbridled romantic assertion that man is the measure of all things, this Confucian insistence on human participation in the ultimate manifestation of the Way is an articulation of responsibility.

When Confucius said that “at thirty, I took my stand,” he did not merely refer to his own career. Since “the humane people, desiring to be established themselves, seek to establish others; desiring themselves to succeed, they help others to succeed,”¹³ (6.30) engagement in an ever-expanding network of social relationships is an integral part of self-development. Yet, the self as a center of relationships is not reducible to social roles. No matter how proficiently one performs one's roles (father, son, teacher, student, patron, client, and so forth), one cannot become a truly cultivated person without an inner sense of worth and direction.

The Confucian scholar practices not only social ethics but also spiritual self-transformation. In Chinese tradition, this means the embodiment of humanity in one's ordinary daily existence: “Is humanity something remote? If I want to be humane, behold, humanity has arrived.”¹⁴ (7.30) Specifically, the virtue of humanity entails self-knowledge through the art of self-reflection: “To judge others by what one knows of oneself is the method of achieving humanity.”¹⁵ (6:30) This deceptively simple method of self-cultivation requires extraordinary courage and wisdom, for, paradoxically, genuine self-transformation demands the ability to transcend self-centeredness. One of Confucius' disciples reported that the Master was determined to eradicate stubbornness, dogmatism, opinionatedness, and egoism. (9.4)

Confucius' disciple Zhengzi seems to have captured the Master's lesson well: “A scholar must be strong and resolute, for his burden is heavy, and his journey is long. His burden is humanity: is this not heavy? His journey ends only with death: is this not long?” (8.7) To carry the burden and endure the journey is a metaphor for the Confucianist's ultimate concern: learning to be fully human. Thus, Confucius firmly maintained: “A righteous man, a man attached to humanity, does not seek life at the expense of his humanity; there are instances where he will give his life in order to fulfill his humanity.” When Confucius said, “At forty, I had no doubts,” he may have had this solid commitment to humanity in mind.

If even life is not worth preserving when humanity is threatened, the proposition that Confucius focused his attention exclusively on life is obviously false. Implicit in Confucius' valorization of humanity is a transcending perspective that learning to be human is not only anthropologically but also cosmologically significant. In this sense, Confucian ethics is compatible with the Greek philosophical insight that the unexamined life is not worth living. A life informed and enriched by an anthropocosmic vision is not merely human but fully human, which means a sympathetic resonance in and a mutual responsiveness to the will of Heaven. Although the Master's discourses on the nature of things and the Way of Heaven were beyond some of his disciples' comprehension (5.13), there is ample reference to his “religious sentiments” and his sense of awe toward the silent creativity of the cosmic process: “Does Heaven speak? Yet the four seasons follow their course and the hundred creatures continue to be born. Does Heaven speak?” (17.19)

It is highly suggestive that Confucius opted for an aural rather than visual image to describe his state of mind at the age of sixty. His appreciation of music, his singing and lute playing, and his cultivation of the art of listening enabled him to hear the Way in many voices. By then his ears were so attuned to the world that they were as receptive to the cacophony of ill-conceived opinions as to the symphony of great ideas. Etymologically, ear (er) is a constitutive part of the character sheng (sage), signifying that the “virtue of the ear” is a sage's quality. Confucius emphatically denied that he had attained sagehood; he even doubted that he was able to live up to the ideal of a junzi (gentleman, nobleman, or “profound person”): “A gentleman abides by three principles which I am unable to follow: his humanity knows no anxiety; his wisdom knows no hesitation; his courage knows no fear.” But to his students, he was such a source of inspiration that they believed that he embodied humanity, wisdom, and courage in his exemplary teaching.

HOLISTIC HUMANISTIC VISION

What Confucius offered was not a blueprint or a model for imitation. He did not tell his students what the Way was; nor did he demand that his students follow him. He was a man among men—“One cannot associate with birds and beasts. With whom should I keep my company, if not with my own kind?” (18.6)—constantly reminding himself and those around him that learning to be human is a ceaseless practice, that the ultimate meaning of life is realizable in ordinary human existence, that self-cultivation is a communal act, and that reverence for death, spirits, and Heaven is an inseparable aspect of human self-understanding. Through rigorous spiritual exercises in thought and action, he succeeded in integrating aesthetic sensitivity, ethical intelligence, and religious faith into a coherent education for humanity. His “autobiography” is an exquisite unfolding of his holistic humanistic vision. For those who were engaged in a dialogical interchange with him, it was a truly exceptional experience of self-discovery:

Yan Hui said with a sigh: The more I contemplate it, the higher it is; the deeper I dig into it, the more it resists. I saw it in front of me, and then suddenly it was behind me. Step by step our Master really knows how to entrap people. He stimulates me with literature, he restrains me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just as my resources are exhausted, the goal is towering right above me; I long to embrace it, but cannot find the way.

(9.11)

The “it” in Yan Hui's eloquent depiction apparently refers to Confucius' teaching. As a “paradigmatic individual,” Confucius is supposed to transmit the truth of a great civilization. Yet, his message is simple: Try to experience, taste, and embody the humanity in your ordinary daily existence; your self-knowledge harmonizes you with yourself, the society around you, and Heaven above. Learning to be fully human is essentially “learning for the sake of the self,” (14.24) the self as a center of relationships forever deepening, broadening, and renewing.

Confucius has been revered as “the ultimate sage and the foremost teacher” throughout Chinese, indeed East Asian, history. Yet, as a teacher he was unable to change the minds of the feudal lords to restore the moral order informed by rites and music, and as a sage he failed to change the prevailing political rules of the game defined in terms of wealth and power. Nevertheless, through teaching he created a new mode of thinking and a new form of life. As a result, he made it possible for those who were neither rich nor powerful to become profoundly influential by tapping the cultural resources for self-knowledge and for educating the young. We already mentioned that Confucius was not the founder of a scholarly tradition, identified in East Asian languages as ru, which means “weak,” “soft,” “gentle,” and “enduring.” He was, however, instrumental in keeping alive the theory and practice of ru as the longest continuous scholarly tradition in human history.

The Confucian idea of scholar—politically concerned, socially engaged, and culturally informed—is the functional equivalent of the “public intellectual” in modern society. Philosophers, prophets, priests, monks, and gurus are all, in a sense, intellectuals, but ru are paradigmatic examples of those intellectuals who consider politics as a calling, social participation as a moral obligation, and cultural transmission as a vocation. It is not difficult to imagine that public intellectuals in academia, government, mass media, business, labor, religion, the professions, and social movements are the modern ru (Confucian scholars). Public intellectuals are neither rich nor powerful, but by cumulating social capital, cultivating cultural competence, nourishing ethical intelligence, and creating spiritual values, they are indispensable agents in defining the quality of life in a modern society. They may appear to be weak in the eyes of the rich and powerful. Yet, through the exercise of “soft power” and gentle persuasion, they are likely to exert a profound and enduring influence on the emerging global community. Such is the relevance of Confucius, the embodiment of faith in humanity, to us.

Notes

1. For Jaspers' original formulation of the idea, see Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), pt. I, chaps. 1 and 5. For a contemporary scholarly discussion of the issue, see Shmuel Eisenstadt, ed., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (New York: SUNY Press, 1986).

2. Karl Jaspers, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus, vol. 1 of The Great Philosophers, ed. Hannah Arendt and trans. Ralph Manheim (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957), 3.

3. Jaspers, Socrates, 3.

4. Jaspers, Socrates, 3.

5. Unless otherwise specified, all translations of the Analects are from The Analects of Confucius, translation and notes by Simon Leys (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).

6. Herbert Fingarette. The Secular as Sacred (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1972).

7. For a general discussion of Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, and New Confucianism as the three epochs of an evolving spiritual tradition, see Tu Weiming's chapter on Confucianism in Alvind Sharma, ed., Our Religions (San Francisco: Harper, 1993).

8. Simon Leys' translation reads: “Oh, is that the one who keeps pursuing what he knows is impossible?”

9. Simon Leys renders the four subjects as literature, life's realities, loyalty, and good faith.

10. My translation.

11. Simon Leys' translation is: “What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose upon others.”

12. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1, Wm. T. deBary and Irene Bloom, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 46.

13. My translation.

14. Simon Leys renders the Chinese character ren as goodness rather than humanity.

15. Simon Leys' translation reads: “The ability simply to take one's own aspirations as a guide is the recipe for goodness.”