Friday, December 02, 2016

Books read in 2016: No. 60 -- The Sayings of Confucius

by Confucius

translated by Leonard A. Lyall

Started: Nov. 29
Finished: Dec. 2

Notes: Still in a philosophical state of mind, I now turn to Eastern thought, a rarity for me. This 1909 book isn't a complete listing of absolutely everything Confucius was thought to have said, but it should be enough for me to get a gist of the man and his philosophy. These writings were apparently originally compiled by students of Confucius a number of years after his death.

Mini review: This is mostly common sense, being nice to people, working diligently, etc., though some of it concerns historical context not familiar to me, nor probably to most Western readers; and the footnotes are so bare as to be mostly useless. In fairness, this book is more than a century old, so a modern translation might have served me better.

2 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I've never made more than a cursory study of eastern philosophy.

Ty said...

That's me, too, so I thought I'd look into it a bit more.