One on the most interesting concepts I came across while watching the BBC documentary was the concept of Ren. Ren has a few ways to be translated such as goodness, justice and courage but all in all it means humanity. It was said to be the most essential thing to cultivate but the most difficult to contain. Not even Confucius was thought to have fully achieved it according to the documentary. The most interesting aspect of this to me was the quote the interviewee said that was, “Everybody by definition embodies ren, but at the same time to realize it fully it requires learning.” It is a hard concept to grasp that by definition we all have humanity/are apart of humanity, but it is very difficult to actually reach human flourishing in its fullest form and to even understand what that means exactly. As humans, we struggle to abide by our own ethics and rules of what humanity even means. Confucius strived to attain ren and learn by building his character in order to reach this fullest form so that we all as a species could flourish. Even if one doesn’t practice Confucianism I think that ren is a very informative and helpful concept to try to attain and learn about.
The concept of ren
