Analects of Confucius

The Analects — Lúnyǔ 論語, “selected sayings” — is the central text of the Confucian tradition and one of the foundational books of Chinese civilization. It is not a treatise but a compilation: short sayings, dialogues, and anecdotes about Confucius (Kǒngzǐ, 551–479 BCE) recorded by his disciples and assembled by later generations. Reading it is unlike reading the Tao Te Ching or the Gita, which present a unified vision; the Analects is a sustained portrait of a person — his manners, his judgments, his moods, his impatience, his humour — through which his teaching emerges.

We use James Legge’s 1893 translation, Volume I of his monumental Chinese Classics. Legge was a Scottish missionary and the first Oxford Professor of Chinese; over forty years he produced English translations of every major classical Chinese text. His Analects is densely annotated, scrupulously literal, and slightly stiff — the right starting point if you want to understand what the text says, not necessarily what it feels like in Chinese. For the latter, read it alongside a modern version (Slingerland or Ames & Rosemont). The text is organized into twenty short “Books,” each a thematic grouping of sayings.

Where to start: Book 2 (on government and learning) is the philosophical overture. Book 4 is short and contains some of the most quoted lines in the Chinese tradition. Book 7 is the most personal — Confucius on himself. Book 10 is famously strange: a detailed description of Confucius’s clothes, manners, and table habits, included by his disciples as part of his teaching. The whole book is about ninety minutes of reading.