Customer Reviews

The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors

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This new translation of Analects provides us with a fresh view on Confucius' Way as it was, at least the authors claim so. It is correctly pointed out in the book that the task of reconstructing the "original" Confucius is inevitably interwined with our ever-changing understanding of the pre-Chin Chinese intellectual history. The task is never going to be easy, and is highly influenced by subjective preferences of individual researchers. The authors provide an updated theory of how the Analects was written in the course of several hundred years. One thing I like most is that convincing evidences are given to show that filial piety was NOT central in Confucius' morality. However, there are some other shaky arguments. For example, their effort of establishing this guy or that guy as the leader of the early Confucian disciples is too imaginative.

The Analects were always thought to have been written by Confucius' direct disciples during a few decades after the Master's death. Bruce and Taeko Brooks convincingly prove that this was not so. Probably only a part of chapter 4 contains Confucius' exact words. The remaining 19 chapters were gradually written over a period of around 230 years by his disciples and by much later successors who had a different agenda. A key idea of the book is that REN (humanity) was central to Confucius and his early disciples, whereas LI (ritual) became essential to the later successors in the next century. Each saying is followed by the authors' commentary that is scholarly (very "technical" sometimes) but often in a direct and refreshing style. This book is a must for all serious Confucius lovers.

An excellent resource for the scholar. Rearranges the passages into a reconstructed chronological order, but retains their numbering, so the reader isn't lost. Exhaustive notes, plus the most penetrating discussion of the exact meaning of _ren_ (though they spell it "_rvn_") available in any translation. Language a teensy bit stilted in places. "Common alphabetic" (modified Yale) romanization.