Analects

Confucius’s ‘Analects’, one of the most famous works in Chinese literature, remains a mystery in many ways. Who composed the maxims? Were they all created by Master Kong Qiu himself, who lived in the state of Lu around 500 B.C.? Until now, it was widely thought that the ‘Analects’ were a collection of more or less comprehensible aphorisms which came together by accident. Hans van Ess, however, shows that their meaning is clearest if we assume they are in fact all part of one carefully composed text, and if we take account of their historical context and their subject matter. For the first time in the German language, he looks beyond the Christian and humanist discourse of ‘goodness’, ‘virtue’ and ‘rituals’ which even more recent re-translations have relied on, and gives us a new understanding of a work which was actually about sensibility, character and politeness. His instructive annotations explain the translation and shed new light on the teachings of Confucius.

‘The noble mind takes other opinions into account, but does not simply agree. The small mind simply agrees, but does not take other opinions into account.’ - Confucius, Analects (13,23)

*Confucius rediscovered: without the Christian idealist language of previous translations

*For the first time, the historical context of all the maxims is reconstructed

*An important contribution to an understanding of Chinese culture

*By a leading international Confucius expert