A while back, in the now-vanished Discussions section, I proposed a new idea about Analects 2.13. Here I’m putting it back on the record.
2.13
子貢問君子。子曰：「先行其言，而後從之。」(ctext.org)
On Tzŭ Kung asking about the nobler type of man the Master said: “He first practices what he preaches and afterwards preaches according to his practice.” (Soothill)
The latest issue of Early China contains a review by Edward Slingerland of Michael Hunter, Confucius Beyond the Analects (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Slingerland’s concluding paragraph:
Recently I noticed that the way I have always read Analects 5.22 is out of line with the wide consensus. So maybe I’m just missing something.
The next session of the Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian Studies will convene this Friday, December 7th, from 3:30 to 5:30pm in the main board room of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
The speaker will be Deborah Sommer, who will be sharing her “Reflections on a Topically Arranged Translation of the Analects,” as well as a draft of the first chapter. Please contact the Rapporteur, Zach Berge-Becker, for more information and for copies of the paper.
The New York Times recently published an interview with C. C. Tsai, who has written and illustrated wonderful cartoon versions of the Art of War and the Analects (among others). Brian Bruya’s translated versions of both of these texts are now available from Princeton University Press.
SUNY Press recently published the paperback version of Peimin Ni’s Understanding the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of the Lunyu with Annotations.
The archaeologists who are cleaning up the bamboo strips found in the Haihunhou tomb are expected to confirm that one of the texts recovered is the long lost Qi version of the Analects; see here.
This report discusses an unearthed text thought to be the lost Qi Analects (《齐论语》).
There are many images and metaphors that might serve as cores of conceptions of something for which one could use the English word “role.” One way to look for some is to look at words from other languages. I’ll look here at two, one from Greek and one from old Chinese.
Peimin Ni’s new translation-and-commentary on the Analects, Understanding the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations, is due out soon: (SUNY, 2017). I have read the book in manuscript, and wrote the following blurb:
Peimin Ni’s translation of the Analects has many virtues that make it stand out as an exemplary version of this most important Chinese text. Ni has chosen to present the text as a living document, embedded in two thousand years of commentarial conversation over its meaning, with today’s readers very much part of that ongoing conversation.
Among other things, Peimin skillfully translates the text so that its potential ambiguity comes through, making sense of commentarial debates in ways that previous translations have not captured. Congratulations!
