Confucius and the perennial philosophy

I cannot now recall how I came across it, but I recommend this, a rather interesting introduction to the thought of the thinker commonly known in the West as Confucius. 

I also want to draw your attention to the Afterword. This is a response to comments on the original presentation of the paper. Van Norden tells us that one commentator "presented one version of what is sometimes called 'the perennial philosophy’. Those who believe in a ’perennial philosophy’ hold that, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, ’There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it’. In other words, underlying every great philosophical and religious tradition is the same worldview .... If this interpretation is correct, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, Nagarjuna, and many others are all saying essentially the same thing (with some differences in vocabulary or emphasis that tend to obscure the underlying identity of views)." 

Van Norden rejects this supposed "perennial philosophy" with what strikes me as some interesting but not quite knock-down arguments. I began to construct some kernel of the perennial philosophy, something more than merely ET's "be good", something to with the Golden Rule perhaps, but then I came across this:

(The link is here.) And that reminded me again of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony and quite how odd the thought of the ancient Greeks was. Recall, for example, how the prompt for the discussion of love in the Phaedrus is an older man's pursuit of a boy. 

So I have no interest in arguing against Van Norden on his Afterword. In any case, if Confucius was just saying all the same things as everyone else then there would be nothing to learn from him.