Another point that Confucius considered in the Gentleman is ‘rites’. “The Master said ‘The gentleman widely versed in culture but brought back to essentials by the rites can, I suppose, be relied upon not to turn against what he stood for.’ [Book VI.27, “Analects”]. From this statement I can easily say that the Gentleman is a person who must follow and consider rites. Even a person who knows what is moral and benevolent but does not attend on rites; he will never be the Gentleman. Therefore the Gentleman should know what is moral, shows the benevolence, should be worthy of the reverence and must follow all rites.
The gentleman must respect the people below and above his position. It is one of the Confucius’s ideas that characterize the gentle man. Moreover, he should be in equal position with others and he must not think that he is in higher position due to knowledge or something else. If he does not follow this, he will not be able to be the gentleman.
Obviously, Confucius shown us the way how to live, but I disagree with his some points and I think that according to Confucius, no one is a gentleman nowadays. To prove it, I want to compare his statements with real example from life. “The Master said ‘In his dealings with the world the gentleman is not variably for or against anything. He is on the side of what is moral.’”. It means that the person pursuing to be good or gentle, he should not support the sides, but he should be on the side of correctness. I know some students who have two-side opinion. They say one thing that is same with teacher’s idea because they want to get good grade, but after the class, they say opposite things. Before I mentioned that the gentleman is in one line with others, but nowadays’ experience shows other result and it is easy to find the people who think that they are higher due to knowledge, money or something like this. Also Confucius said that he had the way of the gentleman on four counts. They are: “he was respectful in the manner he conducted himself; he was reverent in the service of his lord; in caring for the common people, he was generous and in, employing their services, he was just.”[Book V.16, “Analects”]. It is obviously that these four characteristics are not combined in one person nowadays. The reason is that people have changed their behavior comparing Confucius’s time. Most people became rational or in other words marginal. It means that they count everything that they do as an output and want to get return (input) in form of money or help. To clarify my idea, I want to show one simple example. Suppose, “one man” gets in trouble and surely his friend will try to help. Later this friend gets in trouble and he hopefully expects from “one man” that he will help me because he helped him once.
The last and the arguable statement is “The gentleman understands what is moral. The small man understands what is profitable” [Book IV.16, “Analects”]. From this statement, I can say that no one is gentleman, because everyone makes everything considering advantages. For example, we enter in university to get the knowledge and we invest money to our education because we are expecting to live better in future. It means that even we are studying to get profit in form of knowledge and well-being. It is fact! Another example is scientists or people who invent something new for society. From an economy, I know that no one (scientists) work without salary. Then after inventing something, they become famous and the profit of scientists is in the form of salary and well-known reputation.
In addition to, Confucius’s Gentleman and Plato’s Ideal Person have similarities and of course, dissimilarities. The Master said ‘The gentleman is no vessel!’ [Book II.12, “Analects”]. It is the statement that shows one of the similarities between them. The word “vessel” means to be narrow and this statement means that “the gentleman” was not born as the gentleman, he becomes the gentleman. Moreover, it means that the gentleman is no specialist who is designed for a specific purpose only. This idea is same with Plato’s idea about the knowledge. Plato said that every person had the special knowledge in mind which needs to develop. After developing this narrow knowledge, he pursue to be the educated (know the morality, kindness and norms of behavior) or to be “the Gentleman”. Nevertheless Gentleman and Ideal Person have differences. According to Plato, Ideal Person is the person who serves for his State and considers what justice is. Moreover he must not think neither physical nor spiritual well-being, he should be patriot. According to Confucius, Gentleman is a person who must think about others in society and consider what morality is. Moreover he must think about his spiritual well-being.
Nevertheless I could find some people who were the Gentleman and one of them was Ahmet Yassavi. In my opinion, he was the Gentleman according to Confucius because I learnt his life and I found that he lived in poverty. He thought only about his spiritual well-being and he was one of the founders of Sufism – one of the ways in Muslim. Moreover Ahmet Yasavi was not famous when he lived, he became famous after death. Another wise person whom I consider as the Gentleman was Yusuf Balasaguni. For Central Asian countries, he was as famous as Confucius due to his famous work “Kutadgu Bilik”. His work answers “What is life? In what should we pursue? What is moral?” or in other words, his work explains how to become a gentleman. Moreover Balasaghuni’s thought is closer for central Asian nations than Confucius’s thought because Yusuf Balasaghuni based on the Central Asian culture.
“Is it possible to be the Gentleman?” Nowadays this question has two answers: “yes” and “no”. First answer leads to theoretical approach but second one leads to practical approach. Theoretically it is possible to achieve Gentleman’s qualities and it is to say that I am the Gentleman. By contrast, practically it is impossible to achieve nowadays and no one can show all qualities of the Gentleman in reality. Also this question has another meaning. If we ask someone from one society (suppose scientists’ society) that “Was Adam Smith the Gentleman?”. Obviously, answer is “yes”. If we ask this question for someone who is from other society (suppose sportsmen). Certainly, answer is “Who is it?”. I mean, it is possible to be the Gentleman in narrow society. Nevertheless it is impossible to be the Gentleman for the whole society which consists of narrow societies.
After watching the movie “Rashomon”, I found that I forgot about one quality of Gentleman. It is “being truthful”. Although the movie had a lot of mistakes, it shown somehow philosophical idea. In my opinion, the idea was that no one says truth even death body who has only spirit does not say truth. Moreover, everyone lies considering their advantage from this lie. So, being truthful is one of the important things that the Gentleman must achieve. In the previous class when we discussed about truth we say that everyone lies nowadays and it is fact. Again, this quality (being truthful) provides my idea that it is impossible to be the Gentleman. Nevertheless, trying to achieve this quality makes us better person.
In the end, I want to say that nowadays, people try to be not well-educated in physical and spiritual level, but to be well-known and to have more money. Confucius shown the ways of life and explained what is important for society and for person, but nowadays’ philosophers or high-educated people show us how to live better and search innovations that make people’s life easy. However, we should pursue to be Confucius’s Gentleman and try to achieve the qualities of the Gentleman such as rite, benevolence and morality or in other words, we should combine courage with wisdom and reverence in one soul.