Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

32 Teachings I: The Foundation of a Good PersonCourage had been talked about a great deal in the early Zhou dynasty:the nobles were warriors and spent their time in hunting or war. The struttingwarriors of the time based their reputations on their physical courage.By the time of Confucius, war was waged more and more by big battalionsthan by battling heroes. The audacious warrior who disobeyed orders toshow his courage had become a problem, not an asset. Still, courage wasassociated generally with physical courage, bravado, and honor.Confucius took the concept of courage, made it a virtue, and put it inthe service of moral behavior. “ To see what is right, but not to do it, thisshows a lack of courage. ” 32 For Confucius, courage is moral courage, andit was as difficult to find in Confucius ’ time as it is in ours. People worryabout their status, their paycheck, their reputation, their family, and theirfuture, and this leads to moral cowardice, just as Confucius said it would.As a result, civil servants and government ministers do not argue withtheir ruler – prime minister or president – when it is clear that governmentpolicy is wrong or immoral. Executives of corporations do not blow thewhistle about wrongdoing in their companies; workers pour toxic wasteinto farmers ’ fields in the dead of night. These people, by and large, have theknowledge that what is going on is not right, but they are too self - interestedand too cowardly to do anything.Real moral behavior in the real world requires courage. But courage,when not guided by moral behavior, simply allows the wicked to be morewicked. Confucius said that a noble who is courageous, but who does notknow what is right, will create political trouble, while a lower - class manwho is courageous, but does not know what is right, will become a criminal.33 Courage by itself is no guarantee of moral behavior; courage in theservice of morality generates the energy to carry out that moral behavior.Understanding, Sympathy, CompassionThe virtues we have looked at so far are very much “ inner ” virtues. But,in Confucius ’ thought, virtues are not cultivated for our private amusementor heavenly salvation. Moral virtues are meant to act out into the world;morality is not merely a private achievement. The last virtue on our listmoves us outside of our private universe and has to do directly with dealingwith other people.Confucius startled his students one day by saying that all his teachingscould be hung together on a single thread. Zengzi, one of his brighterstudents, explained to the others that this thread consisted of two things:loyalty/dutifulness and understanding/sympathy/compassion. 34 In other passages,Confucius defines what he means by the term shu , which we translateas “ understanding, ” “ sympathy, ” or “ compassion. ” It means, Confucius