Humanist Thought in Confucian Literature

Extract

Confucian humanist thought takes as its pivot human life, both in its spirituality and in its love for everything that is. It consists in the perfecting of self and of everything existent, always following the laws of life, in order to arrive, through beneficent knowledge, at perfect union. Since it contemplates man in his relationship with other men, with Heaven, with everything that is, from the vantage points of economics, politics, society, morality, virtue, arts and letters, philosophy, in order to attain the diverse degrees of natural knowledge, there is nothing that it cannot encompass within itself. The general structure of the whole of Confucian humanist thought tends to the traditional objective, which consists in the benevolent appraisal of the aspirations of people in conformity with the creative principle that the heavens embrace everything and that everything emanates from their generously protective climate.