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Confucianism: Daodejing And The Analects Of Confucius

Decent Essays

The second important lesson is The Analects of Confucius. According to Eno, “The Analects of Confucius is an anthology of brief passages that present the words of Confucius and his disciples, describe Confucius as a man, and recount some of the events of his life” (Robert Eno’s The Analects of Confucius i). Confucianism is a most important philosophy in Chinese literature that was developed by Confucius (551–479 BCE). There are many affects to every facet of life such as government, education, and personal behavior. Not only regular people learned from Confucius’ teachings, but also nobilities and others with different backgrounds. Daodejing and The Analects of Confucius are similar in the sense that they both have reasons and justifications, …show more content…

Five-hundred separated passages were put into The Analects of Confucius, but then is divided into twenty books. The philosophy in the Analects is portrays ethical perspectives which is based off of key ethical terms. There key terms of this Analects are ren, junzi, dao, li, and tian. These terms have a different meaning. According to Eno, “ren” is defined as “a comprehensive ethical virtue such as humaneness, goodness” (Robert Eno’s The Analects of Confucius vi). “Dao”, in Daodejing, means “the teaching or skill formula that is a key to some arena of action: an art, self-perfection, and world transformation” (Robert Eno’s The Analects of Confucius vi). And “li” is described as the ritual institutions of the Zhou, of which Confucius was master (Robert Eno’s The Analects of Confucius vi). Confucius believed that people worked best on standards or rules of life. Because of this understanding, he developed rules for many social activities. While using rules to provide guidelines for human beings, he also believed that the self should not come before the society because of people usually have overriding obligations to parents, ancestors, and society as a

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