Open-note quiz and seminar.
HW: Read packet, write reflective journal entry on blog. (Reflective journal assignment and rubric here.)
These two clips from the recent Chinese blockbuster, "Confucius" (so-so if you're not educated about Confucianism, but interesting in really subtle ways if you are), really bring out the angle on Confucianism as focused more on social beauty than on social morality developed by two Western Confucian scholars here:
"Ritual actions, invested with the accumulated meaning of the tradition, are formalized structures upon which the continuity of the tradition depends and through which a person in the tradition pursues cultural refinement. Like a body of literature or a corpus of music, these rituals continue through time as a repository of the ethical and aesthetic insights of those who have gone before. A person engaged in the performance of a particular formal action, taking meaning from it while seeking himself to be appropriate for it, derives meaning and value from this embodiment, and further strengthens it by his contribution of novel meaning and value."
--Roger Ames and David Hall, _Thinking Through Confucius__New York: State University of New York Press, 1987.
1. "No Need to Bow..."
Just watch Confucius as he approaches the palace in the first minute or so of this clip. That one detail is pregnant with meaning:
2. Confucius and the Concubine
The whole scene is rich, but the end is particularly. The details of the camera, the emotions of Confucius and the Concubine are begging for a blogging film critic.
