On the General Meaning of the Sage

Sun Bo
Additional contact information
Sun Bo: World Religions, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China.

China Report, 2010, vol. 46, issue 4, 333-351

Abstract: From the Confucian perspective, a sage should possess three characteristics: a noble moral character; profound knowledge, and a remarkable ability to put his ideals into practice. Sages are born out of the circumstances of their times, they are the inheritors and promulgators of worthy traditions; in short, they are the ‘divine workers’ in human history. Sages understand ‘the Way’ (Dao) and ‘the divine’, however, from their own perspective. The Way or the divine is nothing but a highly developed and refined way of life. This is ‘culture’. This means that humans must consciously transform their qualities to make their human nature more perfect. Seen in this light, sages are ‘models’ of progression in the self-consciousness of human beings.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000944551104600402 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:chnrpt:v:46:y:2010:i:4:p:333-351

DOI: 10.1177/000944551104600402

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in China Report
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().