The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Chou [Zhou] Dynasty was losing its grip and the country was breaking apart into mutually hostile smaller states. His military skills were becoming obsolete; massive infantry armies and new weapons had doomed the old style of chivalrous small- scale warfare (not unlike that described by Homer [2]).

Confucius needed a new profession, and he tried, as did many others like him, to make his way as a freelance political advisor, drawing on his knowledge of history and the precedents found in ancient documents to help rulers survive in their newly danger- ous age. His fondest hope was to become prime minister of a state and use that position to restore the standards that he thought marked the founding of the Chou Dynasty, five hundred years earlier. He briefly held an official post in his home state of Lu, but never succeeded in convincing a ruler to apply his advice in a sys- tematic way. Though for a hundred generations of East Asians, Confucius has been the paradigm of a teacher and a sage, and though he has been one of the most influential philosophers in history, by his own criteria he was a failure. He died beloved by his disciples, but a disappointed man.

Confucius believed that the key to good government and social harmony was a proper adherence to natural hierarchies: 'Let the father be a father, and the son a son/ From the obedi- ence and deference owed by a child to a parent, and the corre- sponding protection and education given by the parent to the child, he thought, every other social relationship could be deduced: ruler and minister, husband and wife, elder and younger, even friend and friend (because each would defer to the other). He had an optimistic view of human nature, but believed that education was essential to develop that nature to its full potential. And, like Sуcrates (as described by Plato [12]), he understood that a recognition of one's own ignorance is the foundation of learning.

Though a man of deeply conservative views, Confucius opposed hereditary privilege in favor of a meritocracy—proba- bly his greatest gift to Chinese history, and to the world. His ideal was the gentleman, but he imbued that word with special

meaning: A gentleman, for him, was anyone whose actions, education and deportment marked him as such, while a lout whose father happened to be an aristocrat was no gentleman at ali. Confucius also opposed written codes of law, which he saw as an invitation to deceit and evasiveness; he favored instead the rule of li, a word that has no English equivalent but which embraces, in part, the concepts of etiquette, decorum, ritual, and common law. This unwritten social code was to be put into action in a government run by the natural meritocracy of the virtuous (and it is interesting to compare this class with the rul- ing elite in Plato's Republic).

If Confucius wrote anything during his lifetime, it does not survive; the Analects, a collection of his conversations, lessons, and miscellaneous sayings, began to be compiled by his disci- ples shortly after his death, and was added to over a period of several generations. The book has no continuous narrative thread, and there are occasional passages that are obscure or confusing. Some of the teachings will seem self-evident, even banal; this is perhaps because they have so often proved to be true over a period of twenty-five centuries. Some readers will be bothered by Confucius's conservatism, and especially his unquestioning embrace of a patriarchal system that relegated women to an inferior status; reflect that the same charge could be leveled at every great thinker of the ancient world.

The Analects is a fairly short book, worth reading and re- reading; it is the record of a lively and generous mind.

J.S.M.

5

AESCHYLUS

525-456/5 B.C.E. The Oresteia

(Ancient Greek tragedy is so different from the plays we are familiar with that the beginning reader will do well first to

study some standard book on the subject; or to consult the rele- vant chapters in a history of Greek literature; or at least to read carefully the notes and introductions usually accompany- ing the translation. You might also look up the myths associ­ated with the names of the chief personages in the recom- mended play. See the Bibliography for some suggestions for further reading.