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Hello

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and welcome to the History of Philosophy in

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China, by Peter Adamson and Karen Lai, brought

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to you with the support of the Philosophy Department

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at King's College London and the LMU in Munich,

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online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's

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episode, Uncrowned King, Kongzi

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and the Analects. Some

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works of literature are so iconic, so

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firmly established as classics, that they seem

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to have been not so much written

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as discovered, as if they were dug

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up like buried treasure or fell from the sky.

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This feeling can be even stronger if we don't

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know much about the circumstances of their composition or

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if the work seems hard to square with what we know about

0:53

the life of the author. The Bhagavad

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Gita might be such an example, or Shakespeare's plays,

0:57

which are so good that some people insist that

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he couldn't have written them. Within

1:02

the Chinese tradition, the I Ching surely qualifies

1:05

as such a text, as does the most

1:07

central work of Confucianism. The

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Chinese title is Lun Yu, meaning ordered

1:11

sayings, but in English it usually goes

1:14

by the name given to it by

1:16

the European Jesuits, the Analects. It

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was not written by Kongzi himself, and

1:21

does not pretend otherwise. He

1:23

is throughout referred to in the third

1:25

person, often simply as the Master, with

1:27

quite a few passages beginning with the

1:29

phrase zì yuè, meaning the Master said.

1:33

The opening of many passages in the Analects

1:35

establish the authority of Kongzi as the founder

1:37

of the tradition. They also lean

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on the figure of Kongzi to give weight to whatever

1:42

he is meant to have said.

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It is the form of these conversations that is

1:47

the source of the Confucius says jokes, with

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Kongzi saying many things he did and did

1:51

not say. Yet for

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many readers, the Analects, the book, is all

1:56

but identical with Kongzi, the man. It

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has become the canonical presentation of the Confucianism. presentation of his

2:00

thought, a work that makes the reader feel

2:03

an intimate connection to its protagonist. It's

2:06

also a book that's easy to pick up and

2:08

enjoy, though far from easy to understand completely. Indeed,

2:11

this is part of the appeal. As

2:13

with the Gita or Hamlet, any encounter with this

2:15

work both makes you feel that you've gotten a

2:17

lot out of it and that there remains much

2:20

more to discover. As

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Kongtze's student Su Gong said, learning from

2:24

his master was like drinking from the

2:26

sea, since the source was inexhaustible,

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he would simply take in as much as he

2:30

could. Part

2:32

of the reason the Analects deludes immediate

2:35

comprehension is that, however timeless it may

2:37

seem, it does often presuppose knowledge of

2:39

the immediate historical context. At

2:42

one point, Kongtze is appalled by a

2:44

family, shamelessly putting on an entertainment with

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eight rows of dancers. To

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grasp why this would be scandalous, you have to

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know that it was customary for the emperor alone

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to have such a large group of dancers. Elsewhere,

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Kongtze says that his home state of Lu

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relates to the state of Wei as an

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elder to a younger brother, and

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we are again left to speculate about what this might

3:04

mean. Still many

3:07

stories and sayings found in the Analects

3:09

seem straightforward enough. You don't need

3:11

a doctrine in Chinese history to understand

3:13

a passage like, The Master said, A

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clever tongue and fine appearance are rarely

3:17

signs of goodness. But

3:20

this approachability is, by and large, misleading.

3:23

The Analects is a text with its own

3:25

complicated and elusive history. Far

3:27

from falling complete from the sky, it was

3:29

almost certainly composed in numerous stages, something that,

3:32

by the way, also applies to the Bhagavad

3:34

Gita. As with the

3:36

Gita and many other ancient texts in

3:38

India and China, the Analects has received

3:40

attention from scholars who have encountered to

3:42

tease apart different strata of the text. There's

3:45

general agreement that the last five of the twenty

3:47

books in the Analects are a later addition to

3:50

the first fifteen, and even this

3:52

putative original core is surely the work of

3:54

more than one editor, as shown

3:57

by other surviving works that offer reports

3:59

about Kong. including recently

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excavated texts, the material in the

4:03

Analects was gathered together from a much larger

4:05

mass of stories and quotations of this famous

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sage. It's been estimated that

4:10

less than 10% of the

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early material on Kongtze has parallels in

4:14

the Analects. The version

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we are getting here is one that has

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been curated for use in educating young officials

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for public service, and thus it

4:23

focuses on issues of moral character and leadership.

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As we'll see, other Kongtze were

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available. The

4:30

status of the text as the canonical portrait

4:32

of Kongtze goes back to the Western Han

4:35

Dynasty to be specific to the reign of

4:37

Emperor Wu, who reigned from 141 to 87

4:39

BCE. It

4:42

is at this time that we get our first references

4:44

to the title, Le Nuit. Under

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this emperor, a scholarly academy was set

4:49

up for the study of classical literature,

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and the court library was expanded. This

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context helps explain the focus of the work on

4:56

moral education. Of course,

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it would not have been helpful to this project

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to admit that the Analects is just a very

5:02

partial selection of Confucian lore, so

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efforts were made to cement its

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status as a canonical, authentic text.

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Actually, cement is relevant in a more

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literal sense. In a move not

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too far from presenting the Analects as buried treasure,

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it was claimed that the text was discovered in

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the wall of Kongtze's own house. This,

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to what's further alleged, is how the book survived

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the culling of literature that happened in the year

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213 BCE under the teen, when

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the centralization of books in the imperial

5:30

libraries was accompanied by destruction of literature

5:32

in private hands. Of

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course, this whole story is to be taken

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with extreme caution, since it transparently ceased to

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elevate the Han over the teen by making

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them seem like the revivers of ancient wisdom

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their predecessors had tried to destroy. Emperor

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Wu is also credited with

5:50

making the so-called Five Classics

5:52

Wu-Jin of Confucianism into textbooks

5:54

and establishing positions for scholars

5:56

who specialized in them. We

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already know something about this. about this collection of

6:01

canonical works, having discussed two of them in

6:03

previous episodes, namely the Book of

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Changes, or Yiqin, and the Spring and

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Autumn Annals. Remember

6:09

that Kong Tzu supposedly wrote all of the Annals

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and part of the Yiqin. We

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also have on the list the Xixin,

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or Book of Odes, and you'll never

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guess who was traditionally credited with choosing

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the 305 poems included in the collection,

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yes, Kong Tzu himself. It

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is highly praised in the Analects, which,

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exhorts the reader, find inspiration

6:29

in the Odes, take your place

6:31

through ritual, and achieve perfection with

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music. Speaking of which, there

6:36

is also the Ni Jī, or Book of

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Rights, which includes as one section a Book

6:40

of Music. Unfortunately an original

6:42

6th classic devoted entirely to music

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is lost. Finally,

6:47

there is the Xiu Jing, the Book

6:49

of Documents, a collection of historical speeches

6:51

and accounts featuring such characters as the

6:53

great rulers Yao and Xun. Notice

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that three out of these five titles and

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the collective name for the whole set, Five

7:01

Classics, include the word Xing, which as we've

7:03

already seen refers to a classical canonical text.

7:07

As that begins to suggest, these Five

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Classics form a core body of works

7:11

on which the Confucian, or Ruu, tradition

7:13

could be based. But the

7:15

canon continued to evolve. In

7:18

the Eastern Han period, the Analects

7:20

and another Confucian work, the classic

7:22

of Philaeopoeia ji, Xiao Jing, were

7:24

added to the canon, and

7:26

there were further expansions later, including the addition

7:28

of the Meng Tzu in the Song Dynasty.

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In this same period, Suu Tzu nominated

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four Confucian works, the Suu Tzu, as

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a set of texts to be studied

7:38

before delving into the Five Classics. These

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four were the Great Learning, the Analects, the

7:43

Meng Tzu, and the Doctrine of the Mean,

7:46

all of which students needed to master in

7:48

order to attempt the Imperial Examinations. So,

7:52

the apparently serene and stable Confucian canon

7:54

was in fact a work that was

7:56

always in progress. This

7:58

is works could be added over time. So

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individual works like the Yijing and

8:02

Analects were subject to highly contingent

8:05

processes of editing and adding commentaries,

8:07

which scholars sometimes call accretion. There's

8:10

not really any overall system of organization

8:12

detectable in the Analects, and more unsettlingly,

8:14

there are sometimes apparent conflicts between bits

8:17

of material that have been included. Two

8:20

widely separated passages in books 3 and

8:22

11 seem to take contrary views on

8:24

whether it could be appropriate to show

8:26

histrionic grief. A number

8:28

of entries discourage the search for fame

8:30

and argue that it makes no difference

8:32

if a worthy person goes unacknowledged for

8:34

their virtue. Yet at another point, Kongtso

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complains, no one recognizes me. On

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the other hand, there are also plentiful signs of

8:41

local organization in the text. Some

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books do seem like a chaotic mishmash,

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but others have a strong unifying principle.

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Book 10 focuses on ritual practice,

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and Book 19, which is already mentioned

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as probably one that was added later,

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presents sayings from Kongtso's disciples, some

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of which parallel text earlier in the

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Analects. At an even

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more local level, there are passage clusters

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which gather just a few quotations that

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belong together, for example, four consecutive

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texts in which Kongtso answers the

9:10

question, what is nulli al piety?

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In what might seem a real editorial

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lapse, passages in different books occasionally duplicate

9:19

one another. Ironically, one

9:21

of the duplicated passages tries to convince us

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that the whole project of the Analects does

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cohere. Kongtso is made to say,

9:27

twice, that his whole teaching can be strung

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on a single thread. And

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to be fair, this would be well worth repeating if it

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were true. Such remarks

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were an invitation to commentators to reconcile

9:38

apparently conflicting material they found in the

9:40

Analects. Here it could actually

9:43

help that Kongtso is consistently presented

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as being inconsistent, and deliberately

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so. One aspect of

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his unfathomable wisdom is that he tellers

9:51

his advice to his audience, so

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that he may give different answers to the

9:56

same question depending on who is asking. example

10:00

is Kong Tzu's identification of that single

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thread that runs through his whole philosophy.

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When his student Tzu Gong asked for

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just one word to guide him through

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life, Kong Tzu answers, mutuality, or shu.

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There's some variation in the translation of the word

10:15

shu. Mutuality would express

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a complementary arrangement and reciprocal

10:19

understanding. Roger Ames and

10:21

Henry Rosemont translate it as putting oneself

10:24

in the other's place, while

10:26

Edward Slingerman translates it as understanding.

10:29

These various translations bear

10:31

out shu's relational quality.

10:33

Slingerman, his passage seems to

10:35

conflict with an earlier passage that couples

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understanding with nimbleness. Slingerman

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speculates that, in addition to offerings of

10:42

gong, just one word as requested, Kong

10:44

Tzu may be adjusting the advice to

10:47

his student's strengths and weaknesses. He's

10:49

already dutiful, but needs to grow in

10:51

understanding. It's tempting to

10:53

take a similar approach to the aforementioned sequence

10:56

in which Kong Tzu gives alternate definitions of

10:58

filial piety to different people. In

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a still more striking passage, he gently

11:03

chastises his bold, discipled Tzu, who asks

11:06

Kong Tzu whom he would want to

11:08

decide if riding into battle. Tzu

11:11

is obviously hoping to hear that he would

11:13

be the master's first choice, but instead, Kong

11:15

Tzu says, I wouldn't want someone

11:17

who would attack a tiger barehanded or attempt

11:19

to swim the Yellow River because he does

11:21

not fear death. Good point.

11:23

But surely if Kong Tzu had

11:25

been speaking to an interlocutor who was too

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timid instead of too reckless, he would have

11:30

made the opposite point. This

11:32

passage also illustrates another general feature of

11:34

the text, namely that Kong Tzu freely

11:37

directs criticism at his students and other

11:39

people. He is quick to

11:41

lament lapses in ritual propriety, Lee, as

11:43

with that family who had too many

11:45

dancers. One passage combines

11:48

both of these strategies. He

11:50

is confronted with Tsai Wo, who thinks it

11:52

is enough to mourn his parents for only

11:54

one year instead of a more appropriate three

11:56

years. Kong Tzu basically says,

11:58

well, if you feel that Wo years enough then

12:00

by all means go ahead. When

12:02

Zai Wohg leaves, Konsu turns to his

12:04

disciples and says this just shows how

12:07

lacking in goodness the man is. Their

12:09

critical tone is obvious. Less

12:11

obvious is the pastoral dimension, but it's

12:13

there nonetheless. Konsu evidently thinks

12:16

there is no hope of getting Zai Wohg

12:18

to show filial piety as he should. Even

12:20

if he kept up a show of grief, it would be

12:23

hypocritical. But the exchange has offered

12:25

him a chance to educate the others who

12:27

are present, and they may benefit from the

12:29

lesson. Now

12:31

here's another unsettling thought. One of

12:33

the Analects teaches us the way

12:35

that Konsu teaches his disciples. In

12:38

that case, it might withhold teachings from us

12:40

until we are ready. The

12:42

master is quoted as saying, I will not

12:44

open the door for a mind that is

12:46

not already striving to understand, nor will I

12:48

provide words to a tongue that is not

12:50

already struggling to speak. If

12:52

I hold up one corner of a problem and

12:55

the student cannot come back to me with the

12:57

other three, I will not attempt to instruct him

12:59

again. All of

13:01

which fits with the impression we mentioned at

13:03

the outset, that this is a text that

13:05

rewards repeated re-readings. As the reader

13:08

grows in insight and invests more effort to understand,

13:10

it will get more out of it. This

13:13

of course means that different people are likely

13:15

to take different lessons from the work, which

13:17

is in fact exactly what happened. An

13:20

interesting study by Philip Ivanow looks at a

13:22

single sentence from the Analects and how it

13:24

was given very different readings throughout Chinese history.

13:27

As it happens, the passage concerns precisely the

13:29

question of what Konsu was and was not

13:32

willing or able to teach. Let's

13:34

let Karen tell us how it reads in Chinese.

13:45

Slingerland's English version of this goes

13:47

as follows. Zigong said,

13:49

the master's cultural brilliance is something that

13:52

is readily heard about, whereas one does

13:54

not get to hear the master expounding

13:56

on the subjects of human nature or

13:58

the way of heaven. As

14:01

Ivanhoe shows, commentators with Taoist leanings adopted

14:04

a rather mystical reading of the passage,

14:06

taking it to mean that Tao is

14:08

not susceptible to intellectual explanation. Other

14:11

interpreters took almost the reverse lesson from

14:13

it, namely that Kongtze, unlike the Taoists,

14:16

was simply not in the business of

14:18

delving into such metaphysical matters but focused

14:20

on cultural behavior like ritual and proper

14:23

ethics. The same

14:25

sort of problem arises with another entry which

14:27

reads, standing on the bank of a river,

14:29

the master said, look at how it flows

14:32

on like this, never stopping day or night.

14:35

Fans of Greek philosophy might be reminded of

14:37

Heraclitus and the idea that you can't step

14:39

into the same river twice, symbolizing the fact

14:42

that all things are constantly changing and flowing.

14:45

The resonance might not be misleading, given

14:47

that, as we know, the concept of

14:49

change was also fundamental to early Chinese

14:51

thought. The Taoists might well

14:54

take Kongtze to be making an observation

14:56

along these lines, but more Confucian

14:58

readings, so to speak, were also offered,

15:00

for example, that the river symbolizes the

15:03

constant progress of the learner towards virtue,

15:06

or even that this is a lament

15:08

in which Kongtze reflects at how time

15:10

has been passing without bringing success to

15:12

his campaign to rectify his own society.

15:16

That reading may seem a bit of a stretch, but

15:18

it's not a surprise that it left to an interpreter's

15:20

mind. As we already mentioned in

15:22

episode 4, Kongtze's potential as an advisor was

15:24

mostly overlooked by the rulers of his own

15:27

time. Both metaphorically and literally,

15:29

he spent a good deal of time in

15:31

the political wilderness. So

15:33

Confucians were sensitive to the accusation that the master

15:35

had failed in his mission. Numerous

15:38

texts in the Analects and beyond reflect this

15:40

concern. Kongtze himself is credited

15:42

with a range of frustrated remarks, like,

15:44

do you take me to be a

15:46

bitter gourd, content to hang on a

15:48

string without ever being eaten? Supposedly

15:51

a contemporary named Jie Yu told him

15:54

he was being foolish to try to

15:56

teach virtue in wicked times. When

15:58

the world has the way, the sage succeeds when

16:00

the world is without the way the

16:02

sage looks to survival. Later

16:06

thinkers of rival philosophical persuasions sometimes

16:08

used Kongtzu's reported political failings against

16:10

him. He was accused

16:12

of breaking his moral principles under duress

16:15

and compared unfavorably to the more effective

16:17

Mo Tzu. The

16:19

legalist thinker Han Fei, meanwhile, had

16:21

a more philosophically principled complaint. He

16:24

admitted that Kongtzu was a great sage but thought

16:26

it was foolish to base the fortunes of a

16:28

whole society in the presence of such a man

16:30

since sages come along so rarely. Han

16:33

Fei compared this to a foolish peasant who saw

16:35

a rabbit run into a tree stump and bash

16:37

its brains out and thenceforth spent all his time

16:39

watching the tree stump hoping for more rabbits to

16:41

do the same so he'd have something to eat

16:44

for dinner. Confusions,

16:46

of course, tried to clear their founding master

16:48

of all blame. For them

16:50

Kongtzu was the uncrowned king whose

16:52

attempts to exert influence failed simply

16:54

because the rulers of the time

16:56

were venal and corrupt. One

16:59

of the sayings that comes up twice in the

17:01

Analects is, I have yet to meet a man

17:03

who loves virtue as much as he loves female

17:06

beauty. Supposedly, this remark

17:08

was made in the context of deploring the

17:10

debauchery of the rulers of the state of

17:12

Liu, which incited him to leave court.

17:15

That at least is the background supplied by one

17:17

of the most important texts of Kongtzu, apart from

17:20

the Analects itself. A biography of

17:22

the master included a note called Xu

17:24

Ji, or Record of the Historian.

17:27

Its author was Sima Qian, whom

17:29

we met in episode 4 as a

17:31

figure responsible for organizing warring states' philosophy

17:34

into a certain number of identified schools.

17:37

He worked around 100 BCE just as

17:39

the Analects was getting its canonical status.

17:42

Sima Qian aspired to be the successor

17:45

of Kongtzu, a fellow moralizing historian, given

17:47

that Kongtzu was believed to be the

17:49

author of the Spring and Autumn Annals.

17:52

So Sima Qian finished his biography by

17:54

quoting the Odes, "'Pye is

17:56

the mountain I look up to,' the

17:59

set of five classics was also used to

18:01

excuse Kong Tzu for his apparent ineffectiveness

18:03

in the face of political turmoil. When

18:06

the going gets tough, the tough retreat to

18:08

their study and collect poetry and information about

18:11

rituals and history. Sima Qian

18:13

thus says that when the state of

18:15

NU fell into disorder, Kong Tzu

18:17

did not take office but retired, intended

18:20

to the odes, documents, rights, and

18:22

music. We

18:24

get a lot of information, or at least

18:26

putative information, about Kong Tzu from Sima Qian,

18:29

some of which is not so easy to square with the

18:31

Analects. That text presents

18:33

us with an unfailingly wise sage helping others

18:35

to progress in virtue, who looks back on

18:37

his own life and says that he set

18:39

his mind upon learning at the age of

18:41

15 and understood the mandate of heaven when

18:43

he was 50. Sima Qian's

18:46

Kong Tzu is shown working his

18:48

way towards this mature wisdom. As

18:50

a young man, he is arrogant and judgmental,

18:52

and only as he ages does he acquire

18:54

the humility found in sayings of the Analects

18:56

like, When walking with two other people

18:58

I will always find a teacher among them. Elsewhere

19:02

in the text, Kong Tzu modestly admits that

19:04

he has not been able to achieve the

19:06

Tao of the righteous man, which would mean

19:08

being free of worry, confusion, and fear. But

19:11

immediately, one of his star pupils, Zigong,

19:13

comes in to say that Kong Tzu

19:15

was after all a fine example of

19:17

such righteousness. In contrast,

19:19

the reference gives us a Kong Tzu

19:22

who is subject to justifiable criticism and

19:24

includes scenes where that criticism comes from

19:26

his students, as when the

19:28

same disciple, Zigong, blames him for breaking an

19:30

oath. Sima Qian is

19:33

also one of the sources to recount

19:35

the too-good-to-be-true meeting between the great sages

19:37

Kong Tzu and Laozi, who

19:39

reminded Kong Tzu of a dragon. Presumably

19:42

this is a compliment. According

19:45

to Sima Qian, Laozi told Kong Tzu

19:47

to beware of giving frank advice to

19:49

rulers, advice that was itself

19:51

ignored by the ambitious Kong Tzu. This

19:54

scene too can be put into the file of

19:56

evidence about Kong Tzu's political failings and their cause.

20:00

Despite these divergences and differences in

20:02

tone between the Analects and the

20:05

records of Yima Tien, the kongzi

20:07

of both texts is recognizably the

20:09

same character. If we

20:11

cast a wider net, though, we'll cast versions of

20:13

the man that are very different indeed. As

20:15

his legend grew, he grew more legendary, with

20:18

magical abilities like supernatural strength,

20:20

intelligence, and speed. In

20:23

material that circulated in the Han period,

20:25

he's described as performing successful divination, employing

20:28

mysterious animals and home checks, and being the issue

20:30

of a union between his mother and a dark

20:33

spirit who appeared to her in a dream, leaving

20:35

her to wake up pregnant. Then

20:38

there's his physical appearance. Yima

20:40

Tien told us that he was born with a

20:42

protuberance in his forehead, accounting for

20:44

his endearing childhood nickname, Middle

20:46

Son Helok. The

20:49

same text recounts how he was said to look

20:51

like a homeless dog, which made Kongzi say with

20:53

a chuckle that he could only agree. By

20:56

contrast, more fabulous descriptions of the man say

20:58

that he looked like a squatting dragon when

21:01

he sat, and like a driven ox when

21:03

he stood. From a distance, he

21:05

looked like the Big Dipper. Again,

21:07

this is presumably a compliment. How

21:10

then are we to find the genuine Kongzi

21:12

amidst all of this conflicting evidence? In

21:15

all honesty, the answer is that we can't. The

21:18

best we can hope is that the Analects

21:20

and other materials circulating in the Han period

21:22

at least go back to the time of

21:24

Kongzi himself or are based on orally transmitted

21:26

testimonies about him. A spirited

21:29

argument to this effect has been made by

21:31

Paul Golden, who emphasizes that

21:33

philological arguments about texts and their

21:35

transmission need to be augmented by

21:37

considering the philosophical ideas found in

21:39

those texts. He finds

21:41

it significant that later philosophical concepts

21:44

and concerns by Yin Yang theory

21:46

and the cultivation of bodily welfare

21:48

espoused by the somewhat later thinker

21:50

Yang Tzu are absent from the

21:52

Analects. This is, of

21:54

course, an argument from silence, but it might still

21:56

help convince us that even if the Analects as

21:58

we have it was colloidal. several

22:00

hundred years after Kun Tzu died, the

22:03

sayings and stories that were taken into the

22:05

collection might go back to a far earlier

22:07

time period. On

22:10

a lighter note, it has been proposed that we may

22:12

most hear the genuine voice of Kun Tzu when he

22:14

makes us laugh. Christoph

22:16

Habsmaier pointed out that many passages of

22:18

the Analects are funny, and even better,

22:20

supposed to be funny. And

22:23

he is not wrong that one point Kun Tzu

22:25

even explicitly says one of his comments was not

22:27

to be taken seriously, and quite a few of

22:29

the passages could get a laugh from the modern

22:31

reader. Here's one. Kun

22:33

Tzu hears that a villager has been speaking badly

22:36

of him on the grounds that he has failed

22:38

to distinguish himself in any field. He

22:40

turns to his students and says, what art

22:42

then should I take up? Chariotearing?

22:45

Archery? I think I'll take up chariotearing.

22:48

While it would probably be too reductive to take

22:50

this as merely a joke, it does seem to

22:52

be a joke. In

22:55

the Analects too, there is genuinely amusing

22:57

material in which Kun Tzu matches wits

22:59

with other sages. In

23:01

one story, he is again pitted against

23:03

Laozi, who asks him what he is

23:05

reading. Kun Tzu, teasing Laozi

23:07

for his lack of interest in traditional

23:09

decorum, says it is a book about

23:11

ritual and adds, even a

23:13

sage will read such a book. Laozi

23:16

shoots back, fine, but why are you reading

23:18

it? Philosophy

23:20

is serious business, of course, and we

23:22

may be especially unprepared to find humor

23:24

in such an ancient and celebrated philosophical

23:26

text as the Analects, but attempting

23:28

to wonder whether Hugsmeyer is right in

23:31

his rather ironic judgment that, the

23:33

more unconfusion and unsagely the humorous passages

23:35

we discover in the Analects are, the

23:37

more likely they are to be faithful

23:39

to the man in his personal history

23:42

and the more likely we are to

23:44

hear the master's voice. As

23:46

it may, no one can reasonably doubt that

23:48

there are deep and rewarding ethical teachings in

23:50

the Analects and the other texts that have

23:52

communicated the ideas of Kun Tzu to us

23:54

across the ages. We are

23:56

going to need a number of episodes

23:58

to explore them, starting with some of

24:01

the the main ideas in the Analects,

24:03

including Ren or Benevolence, Li or Ritual

24:05

Propriety, and the idea of moral

24:07

leadership. So it's no laughing matter

24:09

when we tell you to join us for that

24:11

next time here on The History of Philosophy.