Socrates and Confucius are strikingly similar? What are the similarities?

Socrates and Confucius have some similarities, but due to the essential differences between Chinese and western philosophy, their differences are still great. Let me analyze some similarities. Some of them were found on the Internet, which may be of some use to you.

Before Socrates, Greek philosophy mainly studied what the origin of the universe was and what the world was made of, rarely involving personal and social issues, and was later called "natural philosophy". Socrates thinks that re-studying these problems has no practical significance for saving the country. Out of concern for the fate of the country and people, he turned to study human beings themselves, that is, to study human ethical issues, such as what is justice and what is injustice; What is courage and what is cowardice; What is honesty and what is hypocrisy; What is wisdom and how knowledge is acquired; What is a country, what qualities a person should have to govern a country well, how to cultivate talents for governing the country and so on. This reminds me of the subtle similarities between Socrates' philosophy and Confucius' thought of "ruling the country and leveling the world".

Socrates' philosophy also has the idea of "saving the world" similar to Confucius'. Socrates and Confucius both believe that only people with high morality and profound knowledge can govern the whole country well. Pay attention to cultivating people's "morality" and set an example. They are all models of morality.

However, Socrates wanted to establish a strict and fair city-state legal system, so that he would rather die than break the laws of Athens. Confucius, on the other hand, hoped that people's moral level would be improved, and advocated that a good moral atmosphere would make "simple folk customs" achieve the goal of stabilizing the world.

Socrates' attitude towards "desire" is similar to that of Confucius. Socrates believes that a person must have moral knowledge if he wants to have morality, and all immoral behaviors are the result of ignorance. Only when people get rid of the temptation of material desires and the limitation of acquired experience and gain conceptual knowledge can they have virtues such as wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Confucius also called on people to "self-control" to achieve true goodness and do whatever they want.

Socrates is a watershed in western philosophy. After Socrates, people really turned to the study of "human philosophy". It can be said that Socrates is "Confucius in the West".