Daoism and Confucianism

    On chapter 13 and 14 in the book "Awakening An Introduction to the history of Eastern Thought" by Patrick S. Bresnan talks about Confucianism and Daoism. The main ideas where how they came about and what these religions meant and did for people. Both of them were invested in nature. While they were a little different, they had the same general idea of letting nature take its course in everyone's life. "Thus, in a broad sense, Confucius was in agreement with the fundamental view of Daoism"(Bresnan 339). They had the same end goal but somewhat different ways on getting hints to why there is two religions of the same goal just like the Shakyamuni Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism. 

The person in the picture is Confucius, the originator of the idea of Confucianism 

    For the chapter 13 question I chose what did Confucius mean by saying that human society had gotten out of harmony with the larger natural order that it is a part of? Would you say that the same thing is true today? How so? What Confucius meant by this is that human society has been straying away from nature. Us as human always pursue selfish interests and this pursuit for selfish reason is what creates this bridge from the natural order of things. "The ancients had understood this, but their descendants, pursuing selfish interests, had strayed from the path"(Bresnan 308). While this is somewhat true Confucius believed with the right leadership the natural order of things can be obtained. I wouldn't say the same thing today. As today's society is extremely chaotic I do not believe in this idea. People may be chaotic and causes the natural flow of things to completely go off course everyone is entitled to their own opinions but in terms of the Confucius's ideas then today's society has disrupted nature.

An in depth video Daoism and its history

    For the chapter 14 question I chose why do you think the Daoist's were so passionately opposed to the Confucian system? What especially did they dislike about it? The reason why the Daoist's opposed the Confucian system so much was because of how it only allowed enlightened selfless men to come into power. These men in power would then order everyone around to re-obtain harmony as explained in Confucianism. " They felt that not only did it fail to restore man to his natural state, it actually made things worse! The simple, natural life that the Daoist's cherished was seen to be smothered in the complex, highly formalized way of the Confucian system"(Bresnan 339). The Daoist did not like how the Confucian system was overcomplicating their way of life and actually believed it was creating more chaos then create harmony. Everyone was equal and everyone worked together to see out harmony. Confucianism and Daoism are very similar but the way they try to achieve their goals are different but both of the beginning ideas of communism.

Work Cited

Bresnan, Patrick S. Awakening An Introduction to the the History of Eastern Thought. Routledge, 2018.

Archer, Hannah. “The Implementation of Confucianism in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan.” Medium, Medium, 5 Mar. 2018, https://medium.com/@xsm918/the-implementation-of-confucianism-in-qing-china-and-tokugawa-japan-e265ad709b74.