Product Description

For more than two thousand years, Confucius has been an inseparable part of China's history. Yet despite this fame,Confucius the man has been elusive. Now, in The Authentic Confucius, Annping Chin has worked through the most reliable Chinese texts in her quest to sort out what is really known about Confucius from the reconstructions and the guesswork that muddled his memory.

Chin skillfully illuminates the political and social climate in which Confucius lived. She explains how Confucius made the transition from court advisor to wanderer, and how he reluctantly became a professional teacher as he refined his judgment of human character and composed his vision of a moral political order. The result is an absorbing and original book that shows how Confucius lived and thought: his habits and inclinations, his relation to the people of the time, his work as a teacher and as a counselor, his worries about the world and the generations to come.

In this book, Chin brings the historical Confucius within our reach, so that he can lead us into his idea of the moral and to his teachings on family and politics, culture and learning. The Authentic Confucius is a masterful account of the life and intellectual development of a thinker whose presence remains a powerful force today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #194322 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780743246187
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
"This is a passionate biography of a man who, as Annping Chin puts it, strove 'to keep the idea of the moral within human reach.' It is a fascinating attempt to recover the actual historical figure who did so much to shape one of the world's great civilizations; but it is also a gripping portrait of that rare person who both faced up to 'human form and fate' -- and lovingly embraced what he saw."-- Jonathan Lear, Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago

Review
"Confucius even now remains the mind of China, and always returns again, whatever the regime. But he can be difficult for Westerners to apprehend, because our cultures and his are so different. It is one of the strengths of Annping Chin's The Authentic Confucius that she clears away most of the difficulties, and allows us to approach an understanding of the sage's life, work, and sayings. Like Socrates and Jesus, Confucius relied upon the spoken word, with all its nuances of enigmatic wisdom. Annping Chin helps us to recover those nuances, as no one else has."-- Harold Bloom

"The life of Confucius, China's 'Sage for Ten-Thousand Generations,' began like all others -- in a particular time and place. Although Annping Chin is clearly impressed with the timeless quality of Confucius' teaching, she strives to show us Confucius as he traveled through his life. As she says of his teaching, so too might we say of this book: 'it mirrors a life unfolding, and it is natural.' This may not be 'the' authentic Confucius forever and always, but it is an authentic one -- of his time and place, and for ours."-- Edward L. Shaughnessy, professor of Early Chinese Studies, The University of Chicago

"The teachings of Confucius have survived through periods of political upheaval and brutal suppression for some twenty-five hundred years. Gleaned from her years of study of fragments of ancient texts, Annping Chin has sketched a highly readable and thought-provoking portrait of the life and times of Confucius." -- Henry A. Kissinger

"Meticulously researched and finely judged, Annping Chin's The Authentic Confucius is a perfect companion to the Analects and a wonderful introduction to early Chinese Confucianism." -- Sarah Allan, 1107 professor of Asian Studies, Dartmouth College

"This is a passionate biography of a man who, as Annping Chin puts it, strove 'to keep the idea of the moral within human reach.' It is a fascinating attempt to recover the actual historical figure who did so much to shape one of the world's great civilizations; but it is also a gripping portrait of that rare person who both faced up to 'human form and fate' -- and lovingly embraced what he saw."-- Jonathan Lear, Committee on Social Thought, The University of Chicago

About the Author
Annping Chin studied mathematics at Michigan State University and received her PhD in Chinese Thought from Columbia University. She was on the faculty at Wesleyan University and currently teaches in the History Department at Yale University, where her fields of study include Confucianism, Taoism, and the Chinese intellectual tradition. She is the author of three previous books: Children of China: Voices from Recent Years, Tai Chen on Mencius, and Four Sisters of Hofei. She has also coauthored, with Jonathan Spence, The Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years.

Customer Reviews

A Superb Book for Western Readers Who Want to Understand a Major Thread in Asian Culture
Confucius' influence has endured for nearly 2,500 years at the heart of Chinese culture, even though his light occasionally has been eclipsed by various political and cultural movements. In China, Annping Chin points out, he is simply known as "the first teacher."

Just as the figure of Jesus is reinterpreted in each new age -- and there's vigorous debate among Christians and non-Christians over Jesus' life and teachings to this very day -- Confucius also is the target of continual scholarly reinterpretation.

Chin points out that two large caches of ancient manuscripts that relate to Confucius' legacy, which were discovered in 1993, are sparking readjustments in our modern understanding of that legacy. Plus, after a condemnation of Confucian thought as recent as the 1970s in China, his influence is rising again in his homeland.

In her book, she points out that, once again, Chinese government funding is available for scholarly conferences on the Confucian tradition -- an official move with complex interconnections to the current cultural mix in China. Ping has been part of all of this unfolding reinterpretation, traveling widely in China, examining the new manuscripts, attending at least one of these major scholarly conferences.

That's why it's so important to select a recent book like this, published in 2007, in exploring Confucius and his ongoing importance as a spiritual and cultural figure. Books published in other eras spoke to other historical windows into his life and significance.

Chin's work is respected among scholars and she writes with one eye on this elite audience. But, if you're a general reader in this field, you're likely to find this a very helpful book in understanding the "real" Confucius. Ping works hard in this book to limit her overview of his life, work and influence to hard facts attributable to original sources. In other words, this isn't a fanciful "legends of Confucius" treatment.

This means that opening chapters of the book are a little challenging for general readers. In those chapters, Ping works through some of the more complex political situations Confucius faced as a philosopher-for-hire in the service of powerful rulers in his era. But the middle of the book opens up as a fascinating look of his teachings. Plus, Ping's accounts of his followers' distinctive characters and adventures make for flat-out fun spiritual reading.

Her closing chapters look at some of the ways Confucius' body of work was used -- and reinterpreted and sometimes even abused -- in other eras. That's also a very interesting section of her book, especially for Christian readers in the West who are familiar with the many ways that Jesus' teachings bounced through similar waves of reinterpretation down through the centuries. This tendency to human re-interpretation of spiritual sages seems to be a universal yearning.

This is an all-around excellent book for Western readers -- a superb choice as a book to help Westerners understand a major spiritual thread in Asian culture to this day.

an introduction to a great man
The Authentic Confucius is a good introduction to Confucius, his heroes, his followers, and the political climate that existed at the time. Annping Chin attempts to separate fact from fantasy in Kongfuzi's life as recorded in historical records and through the eyes of his disciples and biographers. Though she leans heavily on the Analects, she also uses many texts, especially the Zuo Commentary, and the work of Sima Qian, an imaginative ancient biographer, to give context to some of the Analects' more controversial or fascinating episodes. If you're familiar with the Analects, you may find the different perspectives she presents interesting.
For people who know a little about Kongfuzi from the Analects, one or two other biographies, or from Wikipedia, The Authentic Confucius is an illuminating text.
Those of you that have made a long study of Kongfuzi may find some value in the disparate accounts she digs from various sources. With a bibliography of over seven pages long, her list of sources may also be helpful to you.

The Sage
A fine book on what is now reasonably thought to be known of the great teacher, Confucius. The author, Annping Chin, writes with clarity and authority on a still revered figure, whose actual life to most is lost in a mythical haze.

People interested in China, ethical living, and governmental theory would profit from this biographical study.