Truth-Confucianism

Our focus on Confucius in class has gone to a philosophical level--seeing as Confucius is one of the seminal thinkers of his time, this is not particularly surprising.  Most of the Confucian sayings we looked at from The Analects involve the nature of truth in man.  A particular quote that's been on my mind since discussing it in class is as follows: "The object of the superior man is truth, not food."  Confucius' discussion of the superior man vs. the mean man has a lot to do with seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake.  The superior man attempts to gain knowledge because it is necessary and righteous.  The mean man attempts to gain knowledge as to gain wealth.

The importance of truth to the superior man is a foggy sort of concept.  What is truth?  Ought the truth mean the same thing to everyone?  If not, how do we find our own truth?

The way I see it, most people these days choose the idea of "food" over truth.  They choose to gain wealth, to become well-known, to "sell out," if you will, because attaining wealth and fame is more immediately pleasurable in this world than finding truth.  The way that this piece of Confucian thinking works creates binary oppositions: the concept of truth cannot coexist with the concept of food.  The superior man cannot coexist with the mean man.  At what point, then, at what surrender to the temptation of food or gaining of knowledge, does one become mean or superior?

Reading about Confucius asks the reader what her truth is.  As for me?  I'm not sure yet.  The way that my life has panned out so far seems to aim for an altruism based on passing on knowledge and compassion to others; I'm an idealist who ultimately wants to teach and write with the purpose of sending the message that life is not as difficult as it seems.  Though things are ugly and difficult and I would love to open people's eyes to the calamity our world faces, we can come out of it stronger, better, more intelligent, more whole.  But, of course, that's me.  I can't speak for the next person who reads this blog; I can't speak for myself in the next twenty years.  Things change.  The idea of truth changes. Truth now is surely a concept very, very different from truth in Confucius' time.  And it will change again over the next 2500 years, should we make it that far.

So who am I to say that I am superior for seeking truth?