Confucius's Virtue-Centered Rhetoric.

Once again it was a nice break to read a non-western article regarding rhetoric. On the second page I was reminded of our readings about Sophists when the article said, "To examine the Confucius's discussion of the relationship among language, virtue, and persuasion. This reminded me of the sophists as well as Plato and his whole beliefs regarding virtue. Actually a lot of stuff in the article had me thinking back to sophistry.

I also saw Aristotle's influence when it discussed the construction of pathos and the use of language in classical Chinese works. However the Confucius definition of rhetoric did stray away from Aristotle's definition of rhetoric. They differed because Aristotle's definition of rhetoric is all the available means of persuasion and Confucius put more emphasis on the idea of virtue. Another difference between Confucius rhetoric and past reading regarding rhetoric is Confucius suggests that rhetoric is participatory. I have always though of rhetoric as unavoidable. Primarily everything is rhetoric and I never saw it as an option to participate in it or not too. But according to Confucius rhetoric is a participatory discourse. Calling rhetoric discourse also varied from out past readings because we always saw them as separate components of language.

I became a little confused when the article discussed the term, Yan. I tried to think about this word in relation to how it would be used in the English language but for some reason I couldn't wrap my head around it. Does anyone have a simple way of defining it?

I also found it interesting that the article suggests that action plays a larger role in rhetoric than words. This reminded me of the saying "don't tell me you're going to do something just do it" or "actions speak louder than words" I guess I could agree with this because actions truly do carry more weight than simple words. Would you agree that actions carry more weight than words when it comes to rhetoric?

The Confucius attitudes towards speech once again brought me right back to the sophistry way of thinking. "Confucius stresses repeatedly that flattery, clever words, and pretentious amiable appearances are seldom associated with virtue." Hello this is such a sophistry thing to say. But as we know they would claim this and then all their speeches would be contradictory and use clever words and flattery.