Sorry for the lack of posting of late.  A combination of work and some personal stuff has taken me away from the keyboard.  But tonight there is some time to get to a couple of things that have been turning around in my head.

A colleague sent me a link to this piece by Timothy Garton Ash, the great interpreter of late twentieth century Europe.  It seems he is at Tsinghua University in Beijing (where I just was!) and he's reading Confucius.  He likes what he's finding.  And he has a sensible approach to it:

… it's a great mistake to conceive of a political and
intellectual conversation with China as a "dialogue between
civilizations." In this conception, Westerners put on the table what we
call "Western values," the Chinese put on the table what they call
"Chinese values," and then we see which pieces match.

Stuff and nonsense. There is no such thing as a pure, unadulterated,
separate Western civilization or Chinese civilization. We have all been
mixing up for centuries, and especially over the past two. There's more
of the West in the East and of the East in the West than most people
imagine. Moreover, even 2,500 years ago, when China and Europe really
were worlds apart, Confucius was addressing some of the same issues as
Plato and Sophocles, because these issues are universal.

I absolutely agree with everything here, though, perhaps, I would hesitate at that last word, "universal."  At various points on this blog in the past three and three quarters years I have made much the same argument about there being no "pure" civilization of any sort.  Human cultures have always been in contact and have always learned from and shaped one another. And even at times when that contact is relatively difficult and somewhat remote, as in the Warring States era of Confucius, people at different spots on the globe are struggling with very similar kinds of questions: what is a "good life"?  Who should rule?  How should evil be dealt with. 

I hesitate to accept the assertion of universality (though I could be talked out of that hesitation) only because specific historical contexts matter in how questions get asked and how answers are forged.   China, as far as I know, had nothing quite like the democracy that emerged in some forms of Greek polis.  That is not an absolute obstacle to comparison – I think we can fruitfully compare the ancient Greeks and Chinese – but it is a difference that has to be kept in mind.  As does the later absence of monotheism in China, when compared to Europe of, say, 1000 AD.

But Ash is right when he points out the relevance of ancient Chinese thought, both as a historical counterpoint to the European experience and as a font for contemporary ideas:

So, the interesting way for Westerners to engage with Confucianism
is quite different. This way starts from a simple proposition: Here was
a great thinker who still has things to teach us. Rich schools of
scholastic interpretation over more than two millennia not only
reinterpreted Confucius but added new thoughts of their own. We should
read him and them as we read Plato, Jesus, the Buddha, Darwin and their
interpreters. This is not a dialogue between civilizations but a
dialogue inside civilization.

For this conversation, most of us must depend on translators. In Beijing, I have been rereading Simon Leys's translation of The Analects of Confucius,
with its notes full of vigorous cross-reference to Western writers. Of
course, some passages are obscure or anachronistic. But many of the
sayings attributed to Confucius breathe a remarkably fresh secular
humanism.

I prefer his cautious formulation of the golden rule of reciprocity
– "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose upon others" – to
the Christian one. What should government do? "Make the local people
happy and attract migrants from afar." How should we best serve our
political leader? "Tell him the truth, even if it offends him." Best of
all: "One may rob an army of its commander-in-chief; one cannot deprive
the humblest man of his free will."

A "remarkably fresh secular humanism:"  Yes.  I, too, like the Leys translation, especially his rendering of the marvelous Analects 2.12:

A gentleman is not a pot.

It's nice to see a newcomer enjoying Confucius.  Welcome, Professor Ash, to the wonders of ancient Chinese thought.  Read Mencius next!  We'll use the last words of Ash's piece as our last words here:

Earlier this year, one of Britain's education officials reaped some
mild satire for suggesting that his country's schoolchildren could
benefit from studying Confucius. But couldn't we all? We would not
merely learn something about the Chinese. We might even learn something
about ourselves.