Dear Charles Moyer, I have never doubted that you are an extraordinary fellow; nor have I ever ceased to believe that your insights came from a profound depth, a cultured mind, and a refined soul, and from a determination to get at the truth as you see it, and to express that truth in a dramatic and original way, to make your notions "palpable" if you will. I offer you my sincere apology and heart felt regret if my high opinion of you, and respect for your own point of view has not always been apparent. In the heat of argument and discussion about "issues" it is easy to lose one's better self, as I have done in too many posts. ---------- You wrote: <<Pound's faith was that "Authority comes from right reason." I think he may have gotten that from Scotus Eriugena, but it doesn't really matter.>> I believe you are correct in your attribution. <<Everything I have read of the writings or sayings of Confucius seems to say Kung believed this also, and this is why Pound thought so highly of Confucius. >> You and I can both agree that authority comes (in part, at least) from right reason, and that all authority should be based on correct reasoning. <<It didn't matter whether that authority generated from the people, a leader, a king or the law or from heaven as long as it was from "right reason" for then it was just and people should be satisfied. This is my interpretation. >> This is one interpretation of what Confucius meant, and it is understandable that you might derive such an admirable precept from Confucius. You are in excellent company. Many of the French Encyclopedists, along with Voltaire, drew a similar conclusion about Confucius, and it is a fact that this interpretatation of Confucian thought was a significant factor in accelerating the development of French and European rationalism, and in freeing Western thought from the intellectual stanglehold of the Institutionalized Church. [From the Chinese point of view, I might say, the exact opposite happened. While Confucius, and Confucianism were used as a straightjacket for Chinese thinkers, it was the importation of Western rationalist philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, which helped to free Chinese thought from the narrow constraints of Confucian orthodoxy] <<Yours seems to be that the source is more important than the substance, and you hold the originator responsible for all the failings of his followers like blaming Jesus for all the travesties of the Inquisition. We all err, perhaps I am erring in my assessment of your interpretation. Am I?>> I can see why you might believe that I hold the "source to be more important than the substance," as you put it. I would not say that you "err"; instead I would propose that you and I have not yet effectively communicated the essence of our views to one another, so that a complete and sympathetic understanding of each other's stances would be rendered possible. More on that, later, and about the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Inquisition, vs. Confucius and the institutional history of Confucianism. <<"Warts" or "cancerous tumours" - I wouldn't touch that one with a ten-foot pole.>> That was a rather unfortunate, and unnecessarily provocative metaphor for me to choose. It does not further our conversation, so I retract it. <<In 1963 I bought his "Confucius". I was twenty, I read in it this. 1. He said: At fifteen I wanted to learn, 2. At thirty I had a foundation. 3. At forty, a certitude. 4. At fifty, knew the orders of heaven. 5. At sixty, was ready to listen to them. 6. At seventy could follow my own heart's desire without overstepping the t-square.>> This is one of the most admirable of Confucius quotations, and has produced such a huge amount of commentary as to render a simple interpretation of it almost impossible. Still, I share your general admiration for this particular passage in the Analects. <<I had no doubt the #1 was correct. I remembered myself as a ninth grader so interested in school that I carried a briefcase despite the jokes and jeers of my fellow students. I provided the daily Latin translation for the rest of the class to copy before 8th. period Latin class. Fifteen years later in 1973 I had college, some law school, and graduate school (but no degree) under my hat band and was living in a one room cabin in the woods working as a grill cook and reading every bit of Eastern philosophy I could get my hands on. - A foundation. - #2 At forty, 1983, my certitude was that those things I had learned really did have something to do with living as I had developed my cabinet making business with confidence and lived in a fine old house I rebuilt with my own hands with the help of a "wee wifey waintin' in a wee button-ben" At fifty I circled the above passage in my book in awe and wrote in the margin "1993, I am fifty". The orders of heaven I had compiled in my studies had taken the form of a perpetual lunar-solar circular calendar I fashioned from my study of the alphabets of ancient languages. I got encouraging correspondence from Gerald Hawkins on its applicability to the functioning of the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge in England. It all merely confirmed those orders of heaven that never cease to raise my failing spirits as poetry does also.>> Understood. I greatly appreciate your explanation. [As much as I love poetry, I confess that my spirits tend to be raised more by certain types of music --- Beethoven Quartets, and Mozart operas-- as well as by great philosophy, especially Hegel, Plato, Lao Tze, Al-Farabi, and a host of other theologians and metaphysicians. So if I seem to be too hard on Pound, it is not because I do not appreciate him, but because I do not feel he is central to my aesthetic, or spiritual sustenance (he is, I would say, very important to my intellectual sustenance). The drawback is that I am not sufficiently sensitive to large numbers of people on this list who do derive great spiritual sustenance from Pound. I am not sure how to address the issue, and to make the types of the analyses I am making at the same time. <<Sixty I have not yet reached, and I know that I have not yet learned to listen to them(the orders of heaven).>> We are all attempting to learn this, are we not? <<Seventy seems a long way off and #6 seems somewhat enigmatic to me. I know what the t-square is. I have made a living using it, yet I have no idea what my "heart's desire" will be at seventy, and it frightens me sometimes to think of it. I'm not sure I will hold up under the joy of it if Confucius continues to be correct. What will I do with the self-destructing fool I've chosen as my shadow companion? But I suspect that the "heart's desire" is something like that of nature's, and if this is true then the I Ching tells "Nature creates all beings without erring: this is its straightness. It is calm and still: this is its Foursquareness. It tolerates all creatures equally: this is its greatness". >> I must pass by these reflections with solemn and silent respect. They are worthy thoughts, noble sentiments, which I hope we all can strive to contemplate on an ever more frequent basis as we reach that latest stage in life. <<Wei, I read your posting on the development of your interest in Pound and found it interesting. This in a "round about way" gives you mine. I may have made some statements in the past which were insensitive to others in the same way Pound could give offense, and I would like to apologize for such shortsightedness. I'm still trying to learn to listen. "To be men, not destroyers.">> Thank you for such gracious words. I hope you will accept my apology for the last message I posted, which does not rise to a high level of intelligent discourse, and which neglects the standard of intellectual courtesy to which I wish to strive to hold myself. Your post reminds me of a very important truth: often it is more important and more useful to discover HOW someone arrives a their own perspective than it is to understand in the abstract WHAT that perspective is. In the abstract, we will frequently disagree. In the act of listening to each others narrations of our PROCESSES of development, we will usually learn to appreciate each other as unique beings, with understandable points of view. "To be men, not destroyers," is among the greatest of Pound's philosophico-poetic reflections. Thanks very much for your post, Wei ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com