Settling down and Getting on with One's Pursuit:Key to Understanding Transcendence of Confucianism
On the issue of Confucian transcendence,it is not right to get confined within the original meaning of this Western concept and blindly apply it to Confucian thoughts.Instead,it is nec-essary to grasp the goal pursued in the concept of transcendence.To propose the idea of tran-scendence is to solve the problem of human survival to enable limited human life to gain infinite meaning and value.Western religions and philosophy attempt to transcend the real world and ascend to the heaven through a vertical approach,transforming the self from the finite into the infinite,so as to build an eternal locus for humanity to settle down and get on with its pursuit.Eastern Confucianism,however,denies any possibility of human detachment from the real world.With individual life being definitely infinite,people can integrate their limited individu-al lives into an endless process of life extension through self extension and life transmission,thus promoting life from finite to infinite in the process of"no self"to endow life with eternal meaning and value.The Confucian concept of transcendence refers to the transcendence in the real world,which involves moving from oneself to others,pointing towards the front,back left and right in space,and towards the past and future in time.By extending to others,to future generations in especial,and endowing current actions with value,one can free oneself from limitations in relationship with infinite others and establish oneself in this infinite relationship,so as to gain one's own identity and status It is this difference that leads Confucianism to no place so much emphasized as the value of individuals unique in the West,but to paying more attention to the value of groups,with a hope to unleash individual value through a social group,so as to enable individuals to have a proper place in the group to pursue their own goals.
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