-- James Donald:
However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans...
"Enzo Michelangeli" <em@em.no-ip.com>
Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient philosophical school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually Legalism, which provided the theoretic foundations to the absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi
In my original post, I said that legalism was pretty much the same thing as communism/nazism, so you are not disagreeing with me, merely re - raising a point I had already raised. However, whereas legalism is much the same thing communism/nazism, confucianism is legalism moderated by conservatism
(to whom Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other Chinese reformers and writers of the early XX Century, hated Confucianism as symbol of China's "ancien regime" and decay.
And the commies hated the nazis, as well as other commies slightly different from themselves, and the nazis hated other nazis slightly different from themselves. The conflict between confucianism and legalism does not imply the difference betweent the two is very large, though it is a good deal larger than the miniscule difference between communism and nazism.
By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened,
"by comparison". Well most things are pretty enlightened by comparison with communism/legalism/nazism. I am less impressed by this fact than you are. Confucianism is despotic and oppressive. Even if confucians do not bury scholars alives, they suppress their opponents by means less spectacular, but in the long run comparably effective. China stagnated because no thought other than official thought occurred. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HNIR6uGQUMyllJLev2ryOe5xvv1qtUyvgvnFXy4J 4HfiAds3UvnSj3hJTTbW4uTzwvqIlszbh7H0gilkM