#57: The Philosophy of Confucius: Virtue, Wisdom & the Good Life | Prof. Stephen Angle

What does it actually mean to live well — and can a philosopher who died 2,500 years ago still give us a serious answer?

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka sits down with Professor Stephen C. Angle — Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, and one of the foremost Confucian philosophers writing in English today — to explore why Confucianism is not a museum piece but a living, arguable philosophy with something urgent to say about how we form ourselves, relate to one another, and build a good life.

They discuss:

— What ren (humaneness), li (ritual propriety), and junzi (the exemplary person) actually mean — and why ritual is a training ground for the soul, not just social etiquette

— Whether Confucianism's silence on a personal God is a philosophical weakness or a different kind of depth

— The concept of Tian (Heaven) as a moral-cosmic order — and how it compares to divine accountability in Abrahamic traditions

— Filial piety (xiao) honestly examined: obedience, or something far more nuanced?

— How Neo-Confucian thinkers like Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming built a full moral metaphysics still worth arguing with today

— "Progressive Confucianism" — can a tradition rooted in hierarchy and role-ethics genuinely ground human rights and democratic commitments?

— Where Confucian self-cultivation (xiushen) and Sufi tazkiyah converge, diverge, and illuminate each other

— What the Confucian vision of the junzi (exemplary person) and Islamic concept of insan al-kamil (the perfected human) might say to one another

Stephen Angle's latest book, Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life (Oxford University Press, 2022), makes the case that Confucianism offers what modern individualism cannot: a philosophy of moral growth through relationship, ritual, and role — not willpower, not stoic detachment, but the patient, daily work of becoming more fully human together.

This is philosophy as it was always meant to be — not a spectator sport, but a way of life.

📚 Stephen Angle's Books:

• Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life (Oxford, 2022)

• Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction (Polity, 2017)

• Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Polity, 2012)

• Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Oxford, 2009)

🌐 Stephen Angle at Wesleyan: https://sangle.faculty.wesleyan.edu/