Confucius vs Immanuel Kant on Character

Confucius and Immanuel Kant both have a great deal to say about character — 9 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.

Confucius on character

Kong Fuzi — Chinese teacher whose sayings, gathered in the Analects, shape East Asian thought on ethics, ritual, and learning.

“Follow the seasons of Ha, / Ride in the state carriage of Yau, / Wear the ceremonial cap of Chan, / Let the music be the Shiu with its pantomimes.”

“Variation: To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace.”

“A man living without conflicts, as if he never lives at all.”

“The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.”

“The way of the superior man may be found, in its simple elements, in the intercourse of common men and women; but in its utmost reaches, it shines brightly through Heaven and Earth.”

“The Path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course, which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered The Path.”

“The way of the superior man may be compared to what takes place in traveling, when to go to a distance we must first traverse the space that is near, and in ascending a height, when we must begin from the lower ground.”

“Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is ready to fall, it overthrows.”

“When the Great Dao (Tao, perfect order) prevails, the world is like a Commonwealth State shared by all, not a dictatorship.”

Immanuel Kant on character

Königsberg philosopher who reframed Western thought. His critical philosophy asks: what can I know, what ought I do, what may I hope?

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

“The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.”

“The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.”

“The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.”

Where they part

China, 551–479 BCE and Prussia, 1724–1804 are not the same world, and the difference is not only historical. Confucius treats character as something to be follow the seasons of Ha, /… — a matter of practice. Immanuel Kant 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.