Li Zehou's "Lunyu jindu" (Reading the "Analects" today)

• Published in: Philosophy east & west Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 739 - 756
• Main Author: Nylan, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Honolulu University of Hawai'i Press 01.07.2016; University of Hawaii Press
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Chinese; Chinese culture; Classicism; Confucianism; Confucius (551-479 BC); Confucius (Chinese philosopher); Contemporary problems; Creativity; Ethical instruction; Ethics; Humans; LI ZEHOU: WORLD PHILOSOPHER; Literary translation; Memoranda of understanding; Morality; Pleasure; Politics; Pragmatism; Reading; Religious rituals; Traditions; China
• ISSN: 0031-8221; 1529-1898; 1529-1898
• DOI: 10.1353/pew.2016.0073

This essay urges readers of modern Chinese to acquaint themselves with the distinctive readings that the erudite Li Zehou offers for the multiplicity of interpretive traditions attached to the Analects, in the hope that those with an interest in Chinese styles of thinking can advance this particular conversation in more complex and sophisticated ways. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Li demonstrates the enormous gaps separating pre-Han and Han assumptions from those most typical of late imperial China; Li also is thoroughly conversant with philosophy, East and West, in the twentieth century. While one notes what might be seen as Li's occasional unreflective chauvinism and queries parts of his larger narrative regarding civilization and history, his desire (reminiscent in some ways of Bernard Williams's project for the Greeks) to convey the superior flavor of the antique rhetoric to readers of today and in the future is to be applauded.