The U.S. Supreme Court is the supreme auditor and supreme judicial body of the U.S. federal court system and is the only federal court provided for by the Constitution.
This iconic building representing the highest judicial authority in the United States, the main entrance is full of deep meaning carved 16 statues, one of which is the Chinese in the center, and is juxtaposed with Moses and Rousseau, whom Westerners worship. He is the Chinese sage Confucius, who is regarded by Americans as a moral great.
Let's first look at the two Westerners who are on a par with Confucius, and we can better understand the position of Confucius in the hearts of Americans.
Moses, the national leader of the Israelites and the founder of Judaism. He is considered a very important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the Pentateuch was written by him.
Moses was ordered by God to lead the enslaved Israelites to flee ancient Egypt to the rich land of Canaan, after more than 40 years of arduous trekking, and regrettably died when they were about to reach their destination, but the ancient Israelites successfully got rid of the tragic fate of being enslaved by ancient Egypt and became the first people in history to worship monotheistic religion.
Moses is mentioned 767 times in the Old Testament and 79 times in the New Testament, and Christians believe that Moses was God's messenger and represented Providence.
Rousseau, French eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinker, philosopher, educator, writer, democratic political commentator and founder of the Romantic literary genre, one of the representative figures of the Enlightenment.
Rousseau's teachings had a great influence on later generations. Politically, his anti-feudal and anti-authoritarian spirit influenced the bourgeois liberal democratic tradition, and his literary creation also had a distinct democratic tendency, which also deeply influenced many writers in the future.
German writer Goethe: Voltaire ended an old era, while Rousseau ushered in a new era. Rousseau's supreme aim was human freedom and equality, representing politics.
Confucius was erected in the U.S. Supreme Court, representing morality, making all Americans who passed by here admire China's moral saints, and also allowing Americans to understand the importance of morality and accept moral constraints.
Confucius's status is the highest in the West, and in the "List of One Hundred Famous People Who Influenced the Course of Human History" by the American scholar Michael Hart, Confucius ranked fifth, ranking after Shakyamuni, the top Chinese, Qin Shi Huang ranked 18th, is the second highest Chinese, Confucius has surpassed the first emperor of China.
During his lifetime, Confucius was revered as the "Saint of Heaven" and "Heavenly Muduo", and was revered by later rulers as the Sage of Kong, the Most Holy, the Most Holy Master, the Most Holy Master of Dacheng the Most Holy Wenxuan, and the Master of All Ages. Confucius's Confucianism had a profound impact on China and the world, and he was listed as the first of the "world's top ten cultural celebrities".
Look at who are these "world's top ten cultural celebrities"? They are world-renowned, are the bright stars of history, and have influenced the course of history! According to the world UNESCO rankings: Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Bacon, Aquinas, Voltaire, Kant.
Westerners first learned about Confucius from the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci's History of Chinese Missionaryism at the end of the Ming Dynasty: The greatest philosopher in China was Confucius. What he says and his attitude towards life is by no means inferior to that of our ancient philosophers; many Western philosophers cannot compare with him. He concluded to the West: "The greatest chinese philosopher is Confucius."
Later, a group of Western scholars began to study Confucius, and many of them famous Western scholars revered Confucius as a "perfect person". Voltaire believed that Confucius was a person who persuaded people to be good, repaid their grievances with directness, and repaid virtue with virtue, believing that "no matter how aphorisms and how canonical the Western nation is, it cannot be compared with this pure morality."
Confucius used to say that benevolence and righteousness, if people were to practice this kind of morality, there would be no war on the earth. Voltaire hung a portrait of Confucius in his chapel and prayed day and night.
We have every reason to have this cultural confidence. As early as 1988, the world's 75 Nobel laureates had already reached a consensus: "If humanity is to continue to survive in the 21st century, it must return to Confucius 2,500 years ago to draw wisdom." ”
Americans are learning morality from Confucius, and we should pay more attention to morality Chinese and consciously accept the constraints of morality.