On Carine Defoort’s “The Many Faces of Confucianism: How to Better Understand China”

This essay outlines Carine Defoort’s lecture on “The Many Faces of Confucianism: How to Better Understand China.” Using loyalty as her guiding example, Defoort explores some general differences between Western and Chinese approaches to understanding concepts, to addressing vagueness, and to learning. In doing so, Defoort also describes six fairly distinctive types of Confucianism, all of which are rooted in early classics and continue with modern examples until today. The underlying message of the talk is even broader than these sections as Defoort ultimately intends to demonstrate to “European intellectuals, journalists, and scholars” that Chinese thinking is far more complex than they often suppose, and that adjusting one’s attitude to learning from China would be beneficial.