In week four, we continue to learn about what is ethics all about and also we got to know about ethics different perspectives among diverse religion in the world such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism and so on. Our lecture was explaining about key words and some main information that reflected those religions so that we could understand the distinctions between their ethical perspectives. We all had to choose one religion which we have never experienced before. My option was that I have to access information then getting to know about Confucianism and finally writing its reflection. Having referred to the source that I found form internet, Confucianism is still in an argument if it is a religion as there are no Confucian deities and no teachings about the afterlife. Thus even without deities and a vision of salvation, Confucianism plays much the same role as religion does in other cultural contexts. The founder of Confucianism was Kong Qiu (K’ung Ch’iu), who was born around 552 B.C.E. in the small state of Lu and died in 479 B.C.E. The Latinized name Confucius, based on the honorific title Kong Fuzi (K’ung Fu-tzu), was created by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries in China. Confucianism has been followed by the Chinese for more than two millennia (2 million years). It has deeply influenced spiritual and political life in China; its influence has also extended to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Confucianism is consists of three aspects as Ren, it is talked about compassion and humanity; Yi is concerned how to be a righteous person; and last Li is more about adequate and behaviour in politeness. Confucian people believe that the Heaven and the Hereafter are out of their control and they are beyond the capability of human beings. Confucianism focuses more on respecting people particularly parents, teachers, and elders. Confucianism does not prescribe any specific rituals or practices. These are filled by the practices of Chinese religion, Taoism, Buddhism, or other religion which Confucians follow.
Actually, I am not that interested to learn about other religious aspects except mine, Islam. However, after this class I realise that sometimes we need to access others, too. Since every religion has its own practises and special characteristics but as I observe that all of them have the same target to teach people to be moral, kind, good and useful individuals. Also, I knew more about one more belief which completely differs from mine. Confucianism strongly ignores deities because they do not believe in that existence of God, the one who create this universe as Muslim’s belief. Rather than that Confucians more concern about human nature and ethical perspectives of humans.
Moreover, Confucianism was also one of the big topics includes in “Eastern Ethics” that we covered in the lecture class. We imaginably went together to China, Iran and Japan to learn about ethical facets of people in these two eastern countries. We got to know about Conficus’ practises in China, Zatharustra’s principles of Iran at Persia stage and went back to Japan with special ethical and spiritual perspectives of Japanese.
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