Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Confucianism and Moral Leadership

This research examines Confucianism and elements of moral leadership with which it is concerned. The research will describe ways in which Confucius translated ancient Chinese teachings to shape his own philosophical/religious system, particularly focusing on the role of the family, and will discuss elements of Confucianism that distinguish it among major strands of philosophical and ethical thought.

Any understanding of the moral content of Confucianism must be based on the fact that Chinese culture at the time of Confucius looked to the example of what was held to be a golden age of virtue. The development of the Confucian school in the fifth century BC represented not only a vital codification and condensation of Chinese wisdom but perhaps even more important, a systematic approach to the codification of a prevailing culture. In his emphasis on ethical forms (li) and on an ethical content for those forms (jen), Confucius advocated adoption of an attitude toward human experience that would, as he hoped, reclaim a new golden age.

The concepts of li and jen had arisen in that age, the Chou dynasty (1025 BC), "the creative age of China's great classical and philosophical literature" (Bodde 378). Li was originally personified, a demigod who "pressed the earth down" while Ch'ung lifted Heaven up (Bodde 391). That construction was of course a metaphor for li as the frame of human experience that was aligned with mythical experience. Thus the main purpose of human experience was to align itself with li. The concept of jen is connected to this purpose, and it appears to refer to the content of moral alignment, "at the heart of the Confucian political as well as moral theory . . . frequently translated as 'benevolence' or 'humanity' but also signifying the ground for all other virtues, the condition of being fully human in dealing with others" (Schirokauer 10). That being so, it followed that human experience in its highest and best expr...

Page 1 of 10 Next >

More on Confucianism and Moral Leadership...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Confucianism and Moral Leadership. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 00:51, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683221.html