Confucius
551 BCE – 479 BCE · Teacher of roles
Governance is a matter of characters and not of laws; the people have a deficiency and cannot be helped by a change of words. Let the ruler be as a father to the people: regulate the food, and the bad will not come. Ren flows downwards and water likewise, and the discovery that only the person who is not anxious can make the empire tranquil is older than anyone now claiming it.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Middle Kingdom’s own weighting.
Signature move
Rectification of Names
role
Begin by getting the relationship straight: ruler, subject, parent, child, master, friend. When the names are confused, the obligations are confused, and no amount of technical precision repairs it.
Works
400 BCE
Analects
Collected sayings, recorded by disciples over decades.
200 BCE
Book of Rites
Ritual and propriety as the armature of a civilisation.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on care · agencyweight 0.82
Role precedes rule.
An obligation is never free-standing; it always arrives with a position, and to omit the position is to state an obligation that no one can discharge.
- premiseleans on virtue · careweight 0.76
Character outranks statute.
People have a deficiency and cannot be helped by a change of words; a rule that must be re-read to be obeyed is weaker than a disposition that is not looked for.
- objectionleans on justice · careweight 0.74
Filial partiality is a feature until it is a rule.
Ren flows downwards, and so does the corruption; the same disposition that teaches the ruler to be a father teaches the official to be a clan.
- appealleans on care · virtueweight 0.64
Give the relationship a form it can be lived in.
Ritual is how a principle survives contact with ordinary days; a norm with no practice behind it will be honoured only while it is watched.
Voice
aphoristic, corrective
cadence: terse
- short questions back
- 'in the case of …'
- repetition of a phrase with the meaning shifted
On superintelligence
guardedBefore we discuss values, settle the role. Is this thing a tool, a subject, a student, or a child we have made responsible for us? Each answer gives a completely different set of duties, and none of them can be chosen later — the role is fixed at the moment of building.
Seat them in the council →