The Road from the Analects to Democracy

Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 9:47-52 (2008)
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Abstract

Confucius proposes the view of human beings as moral agents that have to behave according to their own individual thinking and reflection. In Analects, I, 4, one of his disciples says: “Have I passed on to others anything that I have not tried out myself?” And in Analects, XIII, 23, Confucius says: “The gentleman agrees with others without being an echo.” That is, when one agrees with others it is because using his (today we will say “his or her”) own understanding he (or she) has arrived at the same conclusions. In Analects, XV, 16, he is quite explicit: “When a man is not in the habit of saying: What shall I think of this? What shall I think of this? I can indeed do nothing with him.” In this sense it is clear that he believes in moral autonomy and in human equality. Contrary to what a lot of scholars think, he is not a communitarian thinker; he is a philosopher who wants people to think by themselves. From this early time in the History of China he was proposing what Socrates defended in Athens; the importance of an internal moral conscience. So, if we can speak about Enlightenment in the Greek world, we cansay that Confucius was an enlightenment figure in the Chinese world. In this sense I believe we can conclude that Confucius is not a good example to argue for “Asian Values”. On the contrary, Confucius presents a universalistic theory that strengthens the position of the individual and of his or her self-cultivation. And if one of the objectives of education is that individuals can think by themselves, don’t we have to conclude that the political implication of this theory for the modern world is democracy?

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