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1. Introduction

Mention “Confucius” to a typical Western audience, the immediate reaction is likely to be one of amusement – “Confucius says” followed by a pompous, sometimes ludicrous, occasionally smutty, statement is a frequently used way to tell a bad joke. The only Westerners to take Confucius serious are students and Asian Culture scholars who make a study of ancient Asian literature and philosophy, for whom Confucian ideas are valuable as part of our total cultural heritage, but even they would not usually regard Confucius to be socially relevant in a modern, Western context. “Confucian society” is thought to be some kind of morally conservative, highly heirarchical and tradition-bound society that modern nations evolved away from and that are in an ongoing process of dying away. On the rare occasion when Westerners think about Confucius at all, they might concede the importance of Confucian ideas to Oriental nations and individuals who have not yet fully converted to democratic and capitalist principles, but this is only because traditions take time to change.

This is an unfortunate misconception. The essential ideas of Confucianism are universal, in terms of time, geography and cultural context. They concern how leaders in an hierarchical system should conduct themselves in a way that maintains stability and maximizes consensus. For all the emphasis on democracy and equal opportunity, even Westerners work and live in hierarchical systems, and they can benefit from Confucian principles as much as Orientals.

It is also a serious mistake to assume an inherent incompatibility between Confucianism and democracy, or between Confucianism and capitalism. South Korea, with essentially no change in its government and social heirarchies, now has a democratically elected President who was once an imprisoned, tortured and nearly murdered political dissident. Whereas the more westernized Soviet Union collapsed after  attempting economic modernization, the neo-Confucian China achieved much greater successes in its economic reform, again without undergoing significant modifications of its hierarchical structure. The success of the compact city state of Singapore to establish a prosperous, modern and technologically advanced, yet highly controlled “Confucian” society is well known and highly puzzling to Western commentators.

Far from being exotic and antiquated, Confucian principles, when stated simply, sound too obvious and common: the need for moderation and compromise; the need to follow well established procedures; the need for leaders to constantly reflect on their own conduct, take advice and seek improvements; the need to educate the people one leads; … The point is to follow these as a way of life, so that they come naturally. Confucianism is not a technology; it does not provide a toolkit that one pulls out when the right spanner is needed for a particular nut, or a book of sample answers to be memorized to answer a particular question that comes up on the examination. Like the economic principle of Adam Smith (which too sounds very simple and obvious when stated by itself), Confucianism is a moral philosophy that has to be applied consistently, yet adapted constantly to particular circumstances.

This is an introduction to the life and ideas of Confucius written for a Western audience without any background in Asian Studies, who wish to gain an understanding of the social context under which Confucian ideas arise, and how they were meant to be applied in practice. It is hoped that the reader would not only gain a better appreciations of the cultural background of modern Asian societies and organizations, but also see value in the Confucian way of life and adopt a more Confucian outlook in their future conduct.

The available biographical texts about Confucius contain much writings introduced by later writers with a different agenda. Taoists extoll those aspects of Confucius and disciples to oppose vanity and overachievement, and Legalists about the need for rules and heirarchy. Confucians anxious to show how great Confucius was made up naive and unlikely stories that made his life mythical rather than real. The fact that so many of the stories look ridiculous explains why it is so easy to dismiss the life and ideas of Confucius as comical, or as contrived by reactionary people as tools to preserve an old order. The present account will try to sieve facts from myth and show Confucius as a human person, both a political thinker and a politician, rather than a figure of legend.