This talk discusses a famous passage in the Analects (sayings of Confucius) in which the Master advocates "rectifying names." The speaker explains what this concept means and discusses different interpretations of its importance.
Dr. Van Norden is such a gifted teacher. Really breaking down my negative preconceptions of what I thought Chinese philosophy is. Many thanks dear Doctor!
Ive listened to this video for about 90 mins, i think you have done great job separating the pre qin dynasty confucian school of thought and post qin dynasty confucian school of thought. A lot of common misleading ideas and/or advices people got from confucian are from the studied of scholar post qin dynasty era, well, every before qin had united china, there were already scholars and philosophiers intentionally or unintentionally spoking bullshit as confucian scholar, like Xunzi intentionally quote mengcius wrongly by stating mengcious had a word "human nature is virtues"(性本善) when mengcius never said it before, the closest word to this worng quote is "human nature can approach virtues" (性善), and if you just do a bit of searching the phase(性本善)never ever appeared in the original text. Even the word 本善had no appealing what so ever. Its like someone shoved the sentence thay just made up into other's mouth then start attacking him for speaking that partucular word. Thats part of the reason why i hate second hand study confucius book, zhuxi,xunzi, the famous han dynasty scholar Dong zhongshu.
