Customer Reviews

The Teachings of Confucius - Special Edition

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been doing a survey of eastern philosophy books, including The Art of War, Tao - The Way, and The Samurai Series. When I decided to add Confucius, I was a bit skeptical. The last time I read Confucius, it was on a slip of paper inside a fortune cookie. I was so incredibly surprised and pleased after reading The Great Learning. Confucius was so wise, and I guess the fact that his wisdom has been absorbed so thoroughly by our culture, that it is easy to forget that it was this man who thought of these pearls of wisdom, and they haven't "been around forever." We have tried to reduce his wisdom to easy-to-remember sound bites, but the reader who fails to delve deeper does so at their peril. I have decided to give this book my highest recommendation. Give this wonderful book a chance, and help to preserve the rightful place of Confucius among the pantheon of the greatest minds.

This volume of the complete teachings of Confucius is a gem. There are some wonderful opportunities here to teach basic Eastern philosophy to your children or students. Confucius was a very wise man, and religion aside, his teachings are an excellent way to bond with young adults.

As I was looking for some quotes to share with students, I found a passage which I had forgotten, which really resonated with me:
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."

Unlike most of the books about Confucius on Amazon, this volume contains all 3 of the major works by Confucius which have survived, not just The Analects. If you have only read The Analects, be prepared to be doubly impressed when you read the other works by Confucius as a collection.

No whistles and bells, devoid of cutesy pictures, this edition is the complete surviving collection of the teachings of Confucius. In addition to the widely available "Analects," I was also surprised to find the "Doctrine of the Mean," and the "Great Learning." For people like me who prefer an uncluttered page, this edition was exactly what I was looking for.

I bought this for my mom and she loves it. She is 76 years old and calls me and reads me lines from this book.

This book has a typo every two or three pages. "Fun disclosure" instead of "Full disclosure" is one of the more comical examples of something Confucius surely never said, and exemplifies a recurring motif of putting an "n" in place of 2 "l"s.
Another curiosity mentioned is a cow that was "homed" instead of "horned".

The typos include missing articles, missing pronouns, and sentences that do not parse. These categories of errors cause me to wonder whether the person who laid out the book was merely unfamiliar with English or unacquainted with the Latin alphabet as well. Perhaps the entire job was done with primitive optical character recognition software and no human supervision. That would explain the visual nature of many of the errors.

A pretty poor job considering that you can get Analects free at Gutenberg.org

If you haven't read anything about Confucius, this is a wonderful place to start. I had to get this for my Introduction to World Religions class and it was an easy read, but very profound. I would recommend it to anyone.

This book, comprising all the writings of the great Chinese sage Confucius, is one of the most important books in the history of the world. It has made an indelible impression on the philosophy of the East and intimately affected the philosophy of the West.

If Confucius had not existed, the Chinese would have had to invent him. He supplied the benchmarks by which the Chinese people have measured morality for almost all of recorded history. His view of morality, independent of religion, gave mankind one of its first purely rational moral philosophies. Confucius, for the first time, gave mankind a code of behavior based on virtue for the sake of virtue and not on retribution.

The details of the society at the time in which Confucius lived are reflected in his proscriptions, but it takes only a little imagination to apply the underlying principles to this age. His writings show that true morality is timeless and that the character of mankind has changed little over the millennia.

The works of Confucius cannot be denied their place in history or their importance to China and surrounding countries, but this translation should not be considered a good example of such an important work.

Not being a scholar on the subject, I can only offer a layman's insight; the poor formatting, slack editing and general sloppiness of this book is a substantial letdown. The translation itself is less accessible to that of other translations I have read/own, but offers some interesting thoughts for comparison with other versions. As a starter for the novice, I wouldn't recommend it. That being said, it's one saving grave is the fact that within one book, you get not only the Analects, but also The Doctrine of the Mean and The Great Learning, which ALMOST make it worth buying. Almost. Two stars for the added works.

For a good translation of the seminal Confucian works, look elsewhere says I.