A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects PDF
Preview A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects
A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects DOI: 10.1057/9781137303394 Other Palgrave Pivot titles G. Douglas Atkins: T.S. Eliot Materialized: Literal Meaning and Embodied Truth Martin Barker: Live To Your Local Cinema: The Remarkable Rise of Livecasting Michael Bennett: Narrating the Past through Theatre: Four Crucial Texts Arthur Asa Berger: Media, Myth, and Society Hamid Dabashi: Being a Muslim in the World David Elliott: Fukushima: Impacts and Implications Milton J. Esman: The Emerging American Garrison State Kelly Forrest: Moments, Attachment and Formations of Selfhood: Dancing with Now Steve Fuller: Preparing for Life in Humanity . Ioannis N. 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Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–30339–4 PDF ISBN: (cid:26)(cid:24)(cid:25)(cid:14)(cid:18)(cid:14)(cid:20)(cid:21)(cid:26)(cid:14)(cid:21)(cid:22)(cid:21)(cid:18)(cid:21)(cid:14)(cid:20) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. First edition: 2013 www.palgrave.com/pivot doi: 10.1057/9781137303394 DOI: 10.1057/9781137303394 Lest anyone think the Confucian junzi ideal of the exemplary person belongs only to China or the distant past, they need only look into the life and writings of the person to whom this book is most respectfully and affectionately dedicated, NOAM CHOMSKY DDOOII:: 1100..11005577//99778811113377330033339944 Contents Acknowledgments viii Preface ix What Does It Mean to Be a Confucian? Approaching the Analects: Is It a Book? How Do You Spell Chinese? The Language of the Analects Terms, Concepts and Concept-Clusters The Students The Master On Knowing Reading the Analects: Is What It Says True? Roles, Families and Society Ancestor Veneration vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137303394 Contents vii Rituals (the Li) and Spiritual Cultivation Summary and Suggestions Appendix I: Wade-Giles–Pinyin Conversion Table Appendix II: Concordance of Key Philosophical Terms Appendix III: Student Finding List Appendix IV: A Bibliographical Essay DOI: 10.1057/9781137303394 Acknowledgments I am in the first instance grateful to the many undergradu- ate and graduate students and faculty both in the United States and China that it has been my privilege to teach the Analects in classes, seminars, workshops and institutes over the course of 40 years. I have learned much from them, and they have been a constant source of stimulation to my thinking. Three esteemed colleagues and cherished friends read the penultimate draft of this work, and the final product is much, much richer and less error-laden for their efforts, for which I am highly grateful: Roger Ames of the University of Hawai’i, Marthe Chandler of Depauw University and Michael Nylan of the University of California, Berkeley. As always, my deepest debt is to my wife JoAnn Rosemont, simultaneously my biggest fan and sharpest critic, which makes her such a splendid editor and proof- reader; without whom, not. viii DOI: 10.1057/9781137303394 Preface The major purpose of this little book is to make it easier for you the reader to come to terms with, and profit from one that is even smaller in the original, the Analects, which is made up of a number of statements of, by and about Confucius, the Latinized rendering of the name of China’s most famous thinker. Further on I shall have much to say about that book, but first I need to say a few things about this one. It is intended basically as a preface or prolegomenon to the Analects rather than a synopsis of its contents, perhaps best construed as a tool: I have put together a series of comments, hints, finding lists and suggestions to aid readers in coming to their own interpretation of the book, necessary if it is to enrich and possibly transform their philosophical and/or religious orientations. The 511 little “sayings” that comprise the book have spoken to countless thousands across the ages, but they have not said the same things even to all readers within a single time period, let alone over the course of two millennia, in very different cultural circumstances. There are a number of reasons for the many and varied readings of the text. Virtually every saying in it is multivo- cal, and they are not arranged in any easily discernible logi- cal order. It is not a book that must or even should be read from beginning to end, for it wasn’t written that way, and we aren’t sure of who the “authors” (“scribes”) were. Nor do we know why later editors assembled the text as they did, nor do we know who they were. In sum, the Analects DDOOII:: 1100..11005577//99778811113377330033339944 ix
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