If we trace the origins of Chinese and foreign ideas, they undoubtedly originate from that "axial era", which is a concept proposed by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. He believes that from 800 BC to 200 BC, cultural mutations occurred in China, Europe, India, West Asia and other regions, giving birth to philosophers, thinkers, and religious leaders who influenced later generations.
Chinese philosophers appeared in this period, Confucius was born in 551 BC, plato was born in 427 BC. They are all masters of the source of Chinese and Western political thought, and "saints" and "philosophical kings" are the core ideas of their politics.
Confucius's name qiu zi Zhongni was a native of the Lu kingdom of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period. Confucius was the founding master of the source of traditional Chinese thought, and his Confucian political thought continued until the modern May Fourth Movement, when its dominance was shaken. "Saint" is the core of his thought, so what is a saint?
In the Golden Text, "sheng" is a synaesthetic word, consisting of "mouth" and "ear", which means clever. In the Oracle, the word "holy" is a person with a large ear. It can be seen that the earliest saints were to listen more, and in the "Explanation of Words", "Holy, Tongye." From the ear, the sound is presented", which is also the meaning of more listening.
What does Confucius look like in his mind? In the Analects of ShuEr, Yun said, "If I am holy and benevolent, how dare I?" Or if you are not tired, and if you are tireless, you can be a cloud. "What a matter for Ren! It will be holy!" It can be seen in the Analects of Yongye that the saint should be higher than the benevolent, and the saint must have both benevolence and learning without tiring of people, but this can only be "for Yun'er"
It can be seen that the standard of saints in Confucius's mind is very high, and in Confucius's Analects, only Yao Shunyu can be called a saint, and King Wen and King Wu are not qualified. When Confucius mentioned Yao Shun, he thought that they also had shortcomings in governing the country. Confucius's standards for saints are not only moral models, but also able to benefit the world.
Why did Confucius produce such a utopian idea of saints? During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Zhou royal family gradually declined, and finally was destroyed by the Qin State. Wars were frequent, and daoists were forced to split into hundreds of families, and the sages were created by Daoists. That is to say, it was a time when saints were needed.
During the Xia and Shang dynasties, it was theology that dominated people's thinking, and from this the worship of ancestors was extended. This stems from the long-term low level of productivity, the oppression of nature, and the gradual turn to worship of various natural phenomena. In the early days, people worshipped gods such as water gods working together, fire gods blessing and so on.
During the Yin Shang period, the ruler monopolized this worship, and the will of the heavens could only be known by the ruler, and later in the middle and late period of the Yin Shang, the ancestor worship and the worship of the gods gradually merged.
About the 11th century AD, King Wu of Zhou destroyed the Shang Dynasty to establish the Western Zhou, in this great change, the Zhou Dynasty proposed a new content "respect the heavens and protect the people, Mingde prudent punishment", we no longer rely on the ancestors, but "virtue", the King of Shangyi lost the world because he lost the hearts of the people.
Zhou Gong shifted the focus of political attention from God to man, and put forward the political idea of "respecting morality and protecting the people", which was inherited and perfected by Confucius. The "benevolence" proposed by Confucius is actually the evolution of "morality", and this great transformation also indicates the rise of human nature.
Plato was Socrates' apprentice and Aristotle's teacher, and no history of Western political thought can avoid these three masters and apprentices, and Plato's most important idea is the Republic.
Compared with Confucius's sage thought, Plato is called the "king of philosophy", and his thoughts are more full of philosophical meaning, so to understand Plato deeply, it is necessary to understand his philosophical thought.
In The Republic, Plato divides the world into the real world and the idea world, the real world is the perceptible world, and the essence of all things is the image. The world in the concept is the essence of the real world, and the world in the concept is eternal relative to reality and the source of all things.
He believes that in the real world, the vast majority of people will not think rationally, they have long been accustomed to following the thinking of others, to be precise, it is a mode of thinking that follows most people, so it is impossible to grasp the true knowledge in the world of ideas.
Plato believed that only speculative philosophy was the only way to transcend the real world and grasp the truth. At the same time, Plato also distinguished between philosophers and pseudo-philosophers, who only pandered to the masses, to stir up the mood of the masses, and to benefit themselves.
Unlike the political environment in which Confucius was born, Plato lived in a city-state society, which, in Plato's view, must be based on a strict social division of labor. He divided man into "gold, silver, copper, and iron," and when God created man, he injected gold, silver, copper, and iron into different categories of people, into those who injected gold, and was therefore noble and a natural ruler.
Those who inject silver can only be auxiliaries to the people of gold, who accept the domination of the people of gold and obey their will, and who are responsible for protecting the city-state. God would pour copper and iron into farmers and craftsmen.
Since rulers are inherently noble, they possess true knowledge. Only a very small number of rulers possess knowledge of the world of ideas.
Plato was born into a prominent aristocratic family and had a natural political superiority, but he was not exposed to any political activity in Athens, which also made him a sober observer, contemplating the great changes of the times.
Much like Confucius's Spring and Autumn Period, the city-states of ancient Greece were moving from prosperity to decline. The Persian Wars achieved Athens' supremacy in the Greek world, but the subsequent Peloponnesian War destroyed this splendor, and the Greek city-states seemed to be in an endless decline, with many ruled by despotism.
At this time, the city of Athens established a thirty-oligarchy supported by Sparta, and the subsequent revival of democracy became a mob politics, and his teacher Socrates was executed, which also affected Plato's dislike of democracy.
The political, economic, and social crises of Athens made Plato lose confidence in the athenian city-state, and he sketched a beautiful political picture - the Republic. All existing national governance systems are not good, and it is difficult to achieve ideal political rule without drastic measures and good opportunities.
Ancient Greece is the most fundamental basis for the emergence of Plato's philosophical system, and when ancient Greece faced with the powerful forces of nature, the philosophers mainly thought about the formation of the universe and what was the source of nature? In order to more clearly identify nature, they believe that there must be something immutable in nature, and that this force has always dominated the ever-changing world.
So then Thales believed that what remained unchanged in this world was water, Anaximander believed that the origin of the universe was infinite, and Democritus believed that the origin of the world was atoms. People are in their own positions, arguing endlessly.
On the basis of his predecessors, Socrates focused on the direction of man, and believed that "man is the measure of this world", laying the foundation for the later development direction of "knowledge is virtue". On the basis of Socrates, Plato perfected dualism and proposed philosophical ideas in the world of reality and the world of ideas.
Plato lived in a world where Greece had about 200 city-states, and these city-states were not states in the modern sense, but small political communities. They are generally centered on the city, and then form a political form of a small country and a small population with some villages on the outskirts of the city.
These city-states are relatively small in size and generally have populations of tens of thousands of people, and if they are replaced by modern and huge nation-states, plato's imaginary ideal state is impossible to achieve.
Sparta practiced public ownership, land distribution equally, and legislation prohibited buying and selling, did not attach importance to social wealth, and strictly divided the entire society into strict hierarchies. The main tasks of the citizens were military training and expeditions, while spartan babies were determined by the elders of the Senate, and the strong were raised by the state and subjected to rigorous military training, while the weak were abandoned.
Sparta fought Greece in the Peloponnesian War, which is why Plato's philosophical ideas arose.
The saints in Confucius's mind, as well as the philosophical kings in Plato's eyes, all arose from the Axial Age of mankind. It is all the awakening of mankind in the face of powerful nature, and it is a major progress of mankind from ignorance to civilization.
At the same time, neither of them believes in the law, believing that the negative significance of the law is greater than its positive significance. Confucius believed that "etiquette" is more capable than law in its ideal realm of "making no litigation", that is to say, it is more able to achieve the realm of no dispute in the world.
For example, when the Jin Dynasty planned to build a Ding and then engrave the legal provisions on the Ding, Confucius strongly opposed it, believing that emphasizing the legal provisions would weaken the people's respect for officials and undermine the ideal order between nobles and commoners.
In Plato's view, law is not the best choice for solving social problems, but a rogue option to retreat to the second place when the philosophical king's model cannot be realized. The sages of Confucius, or Plato's ideal state, favored meritocracy, or monarchy.
At the same time, this time the great change, the thinking of human nature is going to a completely different path. Ancient Greek philosophers paid more attention to mastering knowledge and pursuing truth.
The Daoist master's door represented by Confucius in the Spring and Autumn Period was mainly to create saints, from the very beginning to serve politics, from the top to the bottom of the ideological enlightenment, not through the painful tempering of living individuals, nor the free release of the self, but the political power of the saints under the shroud of the tall.
Whether it is the filial piety culture developed during the Two Han Dynasties or the Song Ming Theory, it is from a political point of view to discover human nature in the form of saints, and finally return to saints, without precious individuals.
At the same time, Confucius believed that the essence of man is good, or that after enlightenment, he can become good, that is, good is intrinsic and spontaneous.
Plato, on the other hand, believed that the vast majority of people were deceived by greed, so they needed to be controlled. This control must be external, and if not well educated, then this control is the law.
Confucius believed that education could accomplish this task, while Plato believed that in addition to education, it was necessary to maintain the purity of the "ruling class" bloodline.
Confucius believed that anyone who possessed virtue could become a "saint", and anyone could have the wisdom needed by a ruler. Plato believed that it was impossible for certain groups to have wisdom, and that those who had wisdom needed guardians to protect them.
Many people now think of Plato's "philosophical king" as advocating hierarchy, rather than Confucius preaching openness and equality for all. Perhaps Plato himself thought that his "philosophical king" was too idealistic, so he revised his views in his later work "The Statesman". He thinks the law may be more reliable than an absolutely right leader like the Philosopher King.
Confucius and Plato stood at the source of eastern and western civilizations, and their ideas had a profound impact on the worldview of eastern and westerners. Confucius's teachings, it can be said that until modern times, were the most mainstream values of the Chinese, and Plato's influence on the West was not as great as Confucius's influence on the East. Because in addition to the ancient Greek civilization, Western civilization later integrated elements of ancient Rome, Hebrew, Germanic and many other civilizations.