Note and the Analects of Confucianism

The next topic is in a way a kind of thorny one for me and that is Confucianism. I myself think that these pre-Qin Dynasty thinkers were primarily individual thinkers. The notion of them belonging to schools is something that I think is added by the historians of the Han, Sima Qian and Sima Tan. It is in their History of the World (the Shiji, the Records of the Grand Historian) that we have ancient thinkers being put into boxes as being of the same school, the term “jia” indicating school. Sometimes, however, I think that that notion is misunderstood by modern people, especially Westerners, in that the notion of school at that time was quite different from what modern people would think of as a school. There was no exclusivity involved, that is, you could run with the Confucius today and somebody else the next day. There was no binary logic involved. There was no “you’re in” versus “you’re out.” In the ancient Middle East and of course Western civilization in general, there is a notion of exclusivity that you are a member of a group or you are not a member of a group. In China, right from the very beginning of what we might call “religious” organizations, that concept is completely absent. You can participate in several groups, in several confessions, simultaneously. That’s the way that things are expected to work.