Bertrand Russell vs Confucius on Truth
Bertrand Russell and Confucius on truth, side by side — 4 passages against 4, and what the disagreement is actually about.
Bertrand Russell and Confucius both have a great deal to say about truth — 4 passages and 4 respectively in thinkr's library — and they do not say the same thing. Setting them side by side is more useful than reading either alone, because the disagreement shows you what each position is actually giving up.
Bertrand Russell on truth
British logician, philosopher, and public intellectual. Co-author of Principia Mathematica, and later a passionate voice for peace and free thought.
“I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.”
“Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.”
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”
Confucius on truth
Kong Fuzi — Chinese teacher whose sayings, gathered in the Analects, shape East Asian thought on ethics, ritual, and learning.
“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.”
“Variation: To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.”
“The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.”
“The superior man, even when he is not moving, has a feeling of reverence, and while he speaks not, he has the feeling of truthfulness.”
Where they part
UK, 1872–1970 and China, 551–479 BCE are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Bertrand Russell treats truth as something to be i do wish I believed in… — a matter of practice. Confucius approaches it from another side entirely. Neither is refuting the other; they are answering slightly different questions, and noticing which question you are actually asking is most of the work.