Authors: Confucius, Thomas Crofts (Editor), William E. Soothill
ISBN-13: 9780486284842, ISBN-10: 0486284840
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: April 1995
Edition: Special Value
Burton Watson has taught at Columbia, Stanford, and Kyoto Universities and is one of the world's best-known translators of Chinese and Japanese works. His translations include The Tales of the Heike; The Lotus Sutra; the writings of Zhuangzi, Mozi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi; The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry; and Records of the Grand Historian.
Rich distillation of the timeless precepts of extremely influential Chinese philosopher and social theorist. Includes "Concerning Fundamental Principles," "Concerning Government," "The Eight Dancers: Concerning Manners and Morals," and much more. Footnotes.
Because they offer diverse and sometimes diametrically opposite meanings, the words of Chinese classics are as likely to reflect the prejudices of the translator as the are to exhibit scholarly rigor. This volume is no exception. The publisher's biography of Leys calls him "an astringent observer," and such observations are readily apparent in Leys's sometimes bad-tempered and occasionally ill-judged glosses on a thinker whom he clearly believes would have agreed with him that late 20th-century culture is undergoing the same chaotic moral crisis as 6th-century B.C. China. While the translations are often elegant, and Leys's endnotes offer a few telling examinations of the vagaries and subtleties of translating the Analects, Leys is too often diverted from the Analects by barely relevant citations from European writers and his own digs at other translators of Confucius. Furthermore, neither the introduction nor the endnotes adequately place Confucius in historical context, making the book strangely vague about Confucius's impact on his time and people. (Jan.)
Map | ||
Introduction | ||
I | To Learn, and Then | 1 |
II | In Government, the Secret | 9 |
III | Eight Rows of Dancers | 19 |
IV | Of Villages, Humanity | 31 |
V | Kung-yeh Ch'ang | 41 |
VI | Jan Yung Is One Who | 53 |
VII | Transmitting Insight, But | 65 |
VIII | Surely T'ai Po | 79 |
IX | The Master Rarely | 89 |
X | His Native Village | 101 |
XI | Studies Begin | 111 |
XII | Yen Hui | 125 |
XIII | Adept Lu | 137 |
XIV | Yuan Szu Asked About | 151 |
XV | Duke Ling of Wei | 169 |
XVI | The House of Chi | 183 |
XVII | Yang Huo | 193 |
XVIII | The Lord of Wei | 205 |
XIX | Adept Chang | 215 |
XX | Emperor Yao Said | 227 |
Notes | 233 | |
Historical Table | 246 | |
Key Terms: An Outline of Confucian Thought | 247 | |
Further Reading | 251 |