The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (Classics of Ancient China)

Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont offer a new translation of this Chinese classic of Confucius. While I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy or integrity of the translation, Ames and Rosemont have explained and offered justifications for their translations quite thoroughly. The result is an informative version of this classic text attributed to Confucius. Heavily discussing the ethics of ritual propriety and the need to be a "junzi" or "exemplary person", Confucius believed in wisdom and the law of reciprocity (the "silver rule"). Clearly he was concerned with preserving a moral tradition extracted from the collective understanding of the past. While parts of Ames and Rosemont's introduction are tedious and could be better written, overall they have made a valuable contribution to the understanding of Confucian thought.

If you need confirmation that Confucius is easily the equal of Plato, then this book is for you.

The book contains useful information to understand the time of Confucius with numerous footnotes.

Extremely well presented with Hanzi for reference

This book consists of an introduction, a translation, and an appendix. The introduction gives an historical and textual background, and outlines the philosophical approach of the authors. The appendix has some further remarks about a new version of the Analects found in a Han tomb in 1974, and more ruminations about Chinese language and philosophy.When I bought this book I was a bit skeptical about the subtitle "A Philosophical Translation" -- What kind of hybrid monster would that be? What would made a translation "philosophical"? Is this like saying: a "deep" translation or an "insightful" translation? And what does this choice of subtitle mean for other translations on the market? Are they now, by contrast, all "unphilosophical"? But... I decided to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and see what they had to say.Unfortunately, after reading the philosophical introduction, I came away sorely disappointed and almost disgusted by the intellectual laziness and sloppiness of the writers. Instead of two people trying to think through the real issues that Confucius addresses, issues that are interesting *either* because they are completely out of date (merely of historical interest) *or* because they still may be relevant for people today, whatever their cultural background, I find two muddle-headed academicians spouting nonsense about the "basically substantive and essentialistic" nature of the English language (sometimes generalized to all Indo-European languages) versus the "more eventful", "relational" nature of the Chinese language. If you just squint your eyes a bit, and pretend to sort of vaguely understand what that might mean, and consider the evidence for this view, you find mostly smoke, pipe dreams, the half-digested remains of past metaphysical discussions. You find stupid, plain falsehoods, like the claim that all Indo-European languages have articles. You find a severely misleading account of Chinese grammar -- underlining the supposed ambiguity and vagueness of written Chinese. You find arguments like "The very expression 'thing' ... -- dongxi '' literally, 'east-west,' -- is a nonsubtantial relationship." -- Deep!The book could, I suppose, still be saved by the translation. Unfortunately, philosophy gets in the way and leads the writers to use some very awkward new terms, like "the authoritative person" for "ren".The writers are aware of the awkwardness and try to justify their selections of certain key terms -- which is good --, but mostly I found their arguments, again, unconvincing and disappointing. The arguments are often either circular or straw-man arguments.All in all, I didn't find special merit in this translation compared to earlier translations by others. The language often seems clumsy without need. Especially clumsy if you know enough classical Chinese to see that the original is pretty straightforward and seems very natural. As an example, here is the first paragraph of the first book:"The Master said: "Having studied, to then repeatedly apply what you have learned -- is this not a source of pleasure? To have friends come from distant quarters -- is this not a source of enjoyment? To go unacknowledged by others without harboring frustration - is this not the mark of an exemplary person?""Having studied, to then repeatedly" - that's in my eyes just clunky and wooden."a source of" - the original merely has: "is (this) not pleasant".Compare this with the old Legge translation (1861/1893):"The Master said, 'Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? Is he not a man of complete virtue, who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?'"The last line in Legge's translation is quaint -- after all, this translation is more than a 100 years old, but the first two lines sound more natural to me. (Ames and Rosemont claim that "junzi" doesn't have a gender basis, so would probably object to "a man of", but that seems nonsense to me: women are hardly even mentioned in the Analects, and from a purely linguistic standpoint I also doubt that their claim is true.)

I can't comment on the translation as this is not my field. Reviewing from Joe Schmoe's point of view.Ames provides historical context and constructs a framework at the beginning of the book with which to think about Confucius's teachings. The framework is applied consistently throughout this book, making it not only a much more enjoyable read but one where the meaning of translation comes to life. I am very thankful that Ames wrote this book as it has allowed me a glimpse into my heritage.

If you are a University of Hawaii student studying Chinese or Philosophy, you will be reading this. Be aware that while Ames has done a lot of great work in Chinese Philosophy, he is really doing 20th century postmodernism on a Chinese background. After reading this one might think that Confucius belongs to the same school as Derrida, Foucault and Rorty. That is as absurd as it gets. But academics do not make a name for themselves being correct (outside of the hard sciences that is). If they were correct, they would simply answer questions in a way that satisfactory to readers and move on to the harder questions. Instead, they rise to the top of their fields by being wrong in the cleverest way imaginable and that is what Ames has done. So a generation of American students and scholars are being taught that Confucius would be right at home with some 1970's style sophistry. It is actually kind of funny now that I think about it. I guess when you start with the premise that "truth" is a social construct, you can believe anything.

There are some real nuggets.Broken up into many small entries, although it doesn't help continuity it is perfect when you are waiting for a meeting to start.A difficult read, but, the ability to look up words right in the document is very helpful.

Much more interesting than I had anticipated, with a careful study of the rules that make up the fabric of an ordered society. It's not his fault that the interpretation became too rigid. as happens.

how can I review this, it is what it is, a classic of Oriental philosophy. Even if you prefer Daoism this is still worth a read.

I wish I had shelled out a few extra dollars and bought this excellent translation in hard copy! This bilingual edition includes the original Chinese text (traditional characters) but the visual appearance of the characters is ruined in the kindle edition by extremely offputting graininess and pixelation. Unless the Chinese text is of no interest to you at all, you should buy the paper version. So disappointing. The more simple characters, such as 心、仁 and so on, are readable albeit ugly, but more intricate characters such as 德 just look like squarish blobs. Worse, increasing the text size makes no difference to the Chinese characters, which are apparently some kind of low resolution graphic inset, and so you can't blow them up to the point where you can make them out. Moreover, the fixed size of each piece of Chinese text varies from passage to passage, so some short passages have huge but grainy characters, while others have small and eyestrain-inducing ones. And that's not all - thee are a few typos in the translation itself, especially in the phonetic romanisation of Chinese terms. Don't rely on the text of this kindle edition if you are citing it in an essay! Do your eyes a favour and buy the real book.

Great book. I was able to find it on Amazon after it was mentioned in the Art of War. As soon as I realized I wanted it....BOOM!!!...it was in my hands in no time!!! 5 stars on this one.

The printing job on this book is atrocious. It is completely shifted upwards making it awkward to read.