This is

This is Philosophy Bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics Podcast

from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePaul University.

You can subscribe to examining ethics on iTunes or listen to episodes at examining ethics.org. The Analex is a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius, but it describes

more than just his words. It also describes the Chinese philosopher's behavior.

These included his many and varied rituals.

Why?

Michael Puyat teaches a hugely popular course in Chinese philosophy at Harvard.

Michael Puyat, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Oh, thank you, it's an honor to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on is ritual.

What part does it play in Chinese philosophy? It plays a

surprisingly strong role in Chinese philosophy. Students today tend to think well

rituals are those things that people had to do in traditional societies

rituals tell us what to do and now that we're modern free individuals we decide

for ourselves what to do so why should I think about rituals and why in the world

should I think about them philosophically is something I should take seriously.

So it's one of the things I find most intriguing about Chinese philosophy and

indeed yes it's oftentimes at least at first glance one of the most

off-putting aspects of Chinese philosophy.

It's often associated with religion as well there's a sense in which you go through certain patterns of

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