REVISITING ANALECTS 20
by Umberto Bresciani
Foreword
In recent decades, abundant discoveries of
archeological materials, including written documents, throughout China have
greatly increased our ability to understand the ancient Chinese. Another
interesting contribution has come from the West. Numerous Western scholars have
been working on Confucius’ Analects and analyzing them in the light of a
Western cultural background, often according to exegetical criteria coming from
Western exegesis, traditionally used to study the Bible or other classical
books. Such endeavors of course are worth our appreciation. Undoubtedly, they
can yield interesting results, i.e. new insights, the same way as when a
Chinese or Japanese scholar reads some famous page from the Bible and, thanks
to his/her cultural background, brings forth some novel insight, which Western
people never thought of. In certain cases, however, these new results leave us
perplexed, because they are built on shaky ground or on circular arguments.
Hereby, I especially feel
the urge to express my disagreement with the view of several authors regarding the
last book of Analects (Analects 20). The purpose of this
article is not to offer a detailed and exhaustive commentary of Analects 20, something that would
require much more space and work. I just wish to express the reasons for my
disagreement with the opinions of certain Western exegetes about this chapter,
which they downgrade to “the aborted beginning of a chapter” (The Brooks),
or to a “hodgepodge of archaic quotations and a reiteration of trite sayings.”
On the contrary, after careful reading of the book in question, and aided by the
annotations of numerous valuable Chinese scholars, I have become convinced that
Analects 20 deserves to be viewed in a
totally different light. It is not the aborted beginning of a chapter; on the
contrary, despite its brevity, it is a very rich and meaningful book, and
undoubtedly a worthy (and meditated) conclusion to Analects.
A
Commonly Held View
It is a fact that Book 20 consists of three chapters only,
as compared with twenty or thirty chapters on average for the other books.
From this fact to asserting that there is something very wrong about it, or
better that it is incomplete, the step is quite easy. In fact, even though the
Brooks’ is certainly the most detailed and sophisticated downgrading of
Analects 20, the idea that Book 20 is an insignificant beginning of a further
chapter that was never written is not new.
In his annotated edition of Analects, Robert Eno
notes that Book 20 “is a short, atypical book that many regard as a late
appendix of miscellaneous material.”
This, after all, is an idea coming from earlier commentators. Simon Leys wrote
– attributing the comment to D.C. Lau – that “for the most part, section 20.1
is a patchwork of ill-connected archaic fragments, which are somewhat related
in their language and contents to the Book
of Documents.” (p. 211)
In recent years, the most large-scale work on
Analects was done by the duo of American scholars E. Bruce Brooks and A. Takeo
Brooks (here below just called “the Brooks”).
In a Prefatory
Note, dated 2001, the Brooks thus
describe their view:
Our present LY 20 is really two
chapters. One is a composition in the style of an ancient Shu document (LY
20:1), which, whatever its original purpose may have been, was not meant to be
an Analects chapter. It was probably
bundled with the Analects text when it was hastily hidden in the wall of
Confucian Headquarters in the year 0249. In TOA, we have treated this
extraneous piece as an interpolation in LY 19 (see p192). Here, for simplicity
of reference, it and the following LY 20:2-3 are brought together. The Analects
text, as later recovered from the Headquarters wall, did begin a new chapter at
our LY 20:2, and thus, counting 20:1 as a separate unit, had 21 rather than 20
chapters. This distinction is important for the history of the text,
though it is something of a problem for a smooth translation of the
text. The other is the few remaining passages, our 20:2-3, which were the
beginning, albeit the abortive beginning, of a chapter which the School did not
last long enough to see realized.
20:3. This passage was added to the school text (and hence
was found in that text when it was recovered in Han from the wall of the
Analects Headquarters in Lu), but it had not been memorized by the school's
students (and hence was not included in the Analects as taken down from the
memory of one of those students in early Han). These, then, were the last
moments in the life of the Confucian School of Lu. How shall we imagine these
last lines to have been written? The acceptance of Fate might be a realization
of how constrained were the possibilities of the Analects group under imminent
threat of extinction, along with Lu itself, by Chu
armies. The emphasis on li
could be an accommodation to life as it would have to be lived under the Age of
Sywndz, the philosopher of li, an age
which even before the final conquest was already upon them. But the final
clause, about interactions among colleagues, seems to suggest that we have here
just one more guideline for the standard virtues in standard situations. We
should probably conclude, then, that Confucian thought ended not with a bang of
new ideas, whether efficacious or not, but with a whimper of reiteration. Our
original note pointed to the degree of advancement over the position taken in
the earliest Confucius saying, LY 4:1. We now ask about its adequacy to the
challenge of the year 0249. It was not enough; nothing would have been enough.
But the end might have had more intellectual distinction than we feel safe in
attributing to this saying.
Simply
stated, according to the Brooks’ conclusions:
a)
Analects 20 is not one book, but
two.
b) What is now chapter 1 (20.1) was a separate
book; it has nothing to do with Analects.
c) Chapters 2 and 3 were the aborted incipit of a new book, interrupted by a
military and political upheaval – the invasion of the Chu army - that destroyed
the School of Confucius
in his home town of Qufu
forever (249 BCE). Faced with the imminent invasion of the Chu army, the teachers
and pupils of the school (according to the Brooks’ surmise) hid their works –
up to what had been written down at that moment – inside the walls of
Confucius’ house.
I strongly disagree with all this downgrading of Analects 20. My disagreement is based on
considerations about its structure and content, as well as about its essential
message. I express here below, in a few brief points, my opinion first on the
general structure of Analects, and
then on Analects 20.
General
Considerations
An ancient book
Analects
is very ancient; it is 400-500 years older than the Four Gospels. Due to this fact, it is already somewhat impressive
that we can understand most of it. It is often quite difficult to make sure the
exact meaning of each single word or sentence and the exactness of each
historical detail. This is no reason to doubt everything. Due to such a long stretch of time, and
so many historical vicissitudes, nobody is willing to exclude the presence of
copying mistakes, interpolations, or mishaps in the transmission of the text.
This is no ground for suggesting that large portions of it were written at a much
later age, or that the order of the text should be totally overhauled and
rearranged, or that most of it has nothing to do with the historical Confucius.
Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, we
should cherish the information ancient writers left to us. Nearness in time is
not guarantee of superior reliability; however, nobody can ignore the fact
that, say, Han scholars had in their hands numerous written materials, which we
do not have, or which came down to us only in fragments. The relative
bibliographical statement by Ban Gu (Hanshu
yiwenzhi) might be the closest to reality, when he says that: “Analects (Lunyu) is made up of replies of
Confucius to queries of his disciples or other contemporaries, or of
conversations among his disciples, where one hears them reporting words of
their master.”
Consequently, except for some isolated characters or cases, I would be for
considering the materials of Analects as belonging to the first two generations
after Confucius (i.e. his disciples and/or his disciples’ disciples), even
though the actual final compilation of a complete book perhaps was completed
another bit later.
Disorderly order
The
content of Analects is disorganized on purpose. Whoever takes the Lunyu in his hands and starts reading,
will immediately realize that its content is disorganized. Any attempt to find
a connecting logic among the various books and chapters has defied all efforts.
This has given reason for certain exegetes to suspect the interpolation of
passages (i.e. chapters) or even of large lumps of material into a previous archaic
composition. Last of these has been the work of the Brooks, with a total
reorganization of Analects and the attribution of most of its content to much
later authors (for the Brooks, gradually along a span of around 230 years), definitely
not to Confucius’ immediate disciples and their own disciples.
In my opinion, the
disorganized nature of Analects can, on the contrary, be seen as a strong proof
of its antiquity and authenticity. It seems obvious to me that whoever in later
centuries added big lumps of materials, or shifted chapters back and forth, could and would have for sure rearranged the
material in a more logical and ideological order, instead
of keeping the original hodge-podge collection of sayings, many unrelated with
each other, with numerous repetitions or quasi-repetitions.
The content of Analects was preserved
in such a condition exactly because of the deep reverence those people felt for
the original arrangement of the collection (a collection of written notes or
oral recollections, or both, from various disciples), and especially for the actual
words of Confucius.
The accretion
theory is just a hypothesis
For their research on Analects, the Brooks have declaredly relied on Cui Shu (1740-1816),
the Qing Dynasty scholar famous for large scale research on Analects, who considered that around 70%
of the content of Analects was spurious (Lau 161). Cui Shu was viewed with veneration
by the like of Hu Shi (1891-1962) and Gu Jiegang (1893-1980). However, the age
of the Antiquity Doubters is long
gone, and Cui Shu has also been known as a “compulsive doubter.”
We certainly need to take a new, not so heavily suspicious, approach to that
ancient piece of writing called Analects.
The fact that Analects has reached us in its state
of disorganization of content is in itself a strong proof that it was done in
that way. The various disciples, witnesses to Confucius’ daily lectures and
conversations, contributed their notes and recollections, and their
contributions were collected as they were. There was of course some criterion,
which now we can only guess.
Out of veneration for the sayings of Confucius, nobody in later times dared to
touch them, or eliminate repetitious passages.
If, as Brooks would have us to believe, so many people later in time did put
their hands and freely shifted passages and added materials at leisure, why was
not its content arranged in a logical and easily intelligible order? It would
have been an easy job for someone of the supposed compilers of later ages, even
easier if an abundant portion of the materials came from their hands. If large
portions of Analects are late
accretions, and numerous chapters were moved forward or backward, for sure
somebody would have done it, would have straightened up their logical order. On
the contrary, in my view, in later generations veneration for Confucius was so
high, that nobody dared to alter the original arrangement of chapters and
sentences (except for isolated instances [i.e. probable interpolations] and
obvious copying mistakes).
Before the Brooks, D. C. Lau also took the lead from
Cui Shu for saying that the last 5 books of Analects
belong together in a group definitely later in time than the other 15 books. Noting
that in Cui Shu this was just a succinct statement, D. C. Lau wishes to face it
in greater detail, so as to finally show that Cui Shu’s conclusion is “incontrovertible.”
(Lau 222) Lau then spends several pages (pp. 222-227) on various philological
arguments, however interspersed with numerous “if this is the case”,
“probably”, and many other “if”, which evidently point to a chain of
conjectures. In fact, his conclusion is not laid down in “incontrovertible”
words, since he writes (underlines are mine): “We have now examined a number of
features which link parts of the last five books to one another and
which show that they probably shared a common origin, and we have seen
that some of these features signify a later date.” (p. 227)
To sum up my opinion, I would say that the accretion theory is not the ultimate
truth about the structure of Analects. It is an interesting hypothesis, but
just a hypothesis to work on in the future. The Brooks have brought to it a
good deal of historical data, but also a good deal of guesswork, so that in the
end it is hard to feel persuaded by it.
Structure
and Content of Analects 20
Even though the structure of Analects
is purposely disorganized, and there must have been, as I just suggested,
practical or ideological, external or internal, criteria for the arrangement of
the material, it is reasonable to suppose that some kind of suitable ending
was foreseen and considered. This is in my opinion the role played by Analects 20.
It might have been that the contributions of Zizhang
were appended exactly at the end because the last portion of them was quite
suitable for playing the role of a conclusion to the whole work. In fact, Book
19 is (in large part) coming from Zhizhang. Analects
20 as well, as An. 20.2 openly mentions.
Analects 20 is made up of three chapters:
CHAPTER ONE is a series of quotations from the Book of
Documents (Shujing). As we know, the Book of Documents is itself a book on
political matters. It is not strange that it shows up here with a flood of
quotations. The Book of Documents was
arguably the most important textbook in the school run by Confucius (we could
name it Confucius’ Institute of Political
Science). The basic political doctrine of Confucius is drawn from these
ancient documents. It is therefore not surprising to find here a collection of
quotations from it.
When reading one of the first lines of
the Records of the Historian by Sima
Qian (who himself aspired most to emulate Confucius) “Instead of recording it
in empty words...,” one feels like entering the mind of Confucius. Confucius
did not like to talk about ming
(human destiny); he preferred to speak of it through historical records and
historical facts, such as these reported here in the Book of Documents. If viewed under this light, the list of
quotations of this page of Analects come
alive and become more meaningful.
Moreover, the five passages from the Book of Documents listed in this place should
not even be considered Confucius’ favorite passages, those passages, which
Confucius – especially in his old age – would cherish to repeatedly recite and comment
upon. In my opinion, they rather should be considered as ‘reference
quotations’, i.e. as cues for whole pages or sections of the captioned Classic.
Analects 20.1 touches on an extremely
important part of the teachings of Confucius, the section dealing with the
origin of political power. The first chapter in a treatise on political
philosophy would be: where does power come from? Why certain people happen to rule
over the human community? It is a political question involving philosophical
and theological views, involving the whole weltanschauung
of a person. As I already mentioned, it is not my plan to write a commentary of
Book 20; but I cannot refrain from pointing out that the harvest of political
concepts and doctrines to be gathered from those pages of the book of Documents is simply enormous. It
includes at least the following main points:
1.
Political
power comes from Heaven. Whoever is at the head of a country is in that
position due to the appointment of Heaven.
2.
The
appointment of Heaven to rule a country comes to a human being through various
ways. One may be chosen to succeed in ruling by the reigning monarch, or else
by family inheritance, or through a revolution, military invasion, etc.
3.
Confucius
did not hide his preference for the succession through choice from the previous
monarch, who at a certain point decides to abdicate and hand the position to a
chosen person (chosen because of his outstanding virtue).
4.
Two
concepts dominate the passages (and the Book
of History itself). One is the “stewardship” concept as the foundation of
the very existence and meaning of rulership. The second concept is that “Heaven
sees through the eyes of the people, Heaven hears through the ears of the
people.” So, in Confucius mind, everything comes from Heaven. Political power as
well as the social organization of government is something that is
Heaven-ordained.
5.
In such a
world-view, we do not find ourselves in a theocratic system of government, but
in a highly religious attitude toward life and politics. We are not at the
level of modern Western style democracy, but we find the minben (people-first) principle clearly stated.
6.
The
importance of this page of Analects is
not to be underestimated. It was a crucial source of political debate for
centuries and millennia in China.
We can recall a page from the Records of
the Historian (Shiji) by Sima Qian. It reports an argument between Master
Yuan Gu, a Confucian scholar appointed an erudite at the court of the Han
Emperor Jing, and a certain Master Huang (a Daoist scholar) in the presence of
Emperor Jing:
“King Tang, the founder of
the Shang Dynasty, and King Wu, the founder of Zhou, did not receive any
‘mandate of Heaven’ to do what they did,” declared Master Huang. “They simply
assassinated their sovereigns and set up their own dynasties!” “That is not
so!” protested Master Yuan Gu. “Jie, the last ruler of the Xia, and Zou, the
last ruler of the Shang, were both cruel tyrants, and the people of the empire
turned away from them in their hearts and gave their allegiance to Tang and Wu.
Tang and Wu were acting in accordance with the hearts of the empire when they
overthrew and punished Jie and Zhou. The subjects of Jie and Zhou refused to
serve them any longer, but gave their allegiance to Tang and Wu, who had no other
choice than to set up their own dynasties. Is this not what it means to receive
the mandate of Heaven?”
Hereby, it appears that the content
of Analects 20.1 is at the center of
the debate. The argument continues further, with lively notes from both sides,
until the Emperor himself puts a stop to it, saying that such an argument is
dangerous.
In all the above, I find enough ground to
reject the idea that this portion of Analects
20 was bundled together with the Analects
text by mistake, as the Brooks would have us believe. It was just a too
important witness and proof of the content of Confucius’ political teachings
not to be brought out in Analects,
yet at the conclusion of it.
II.
CHAPTER TWO is a
double list (of do and don’t) of the typical virtues and
policies of an ideal ruler. In Analects
one can find all of them, scattered through the various conversations. Here
they are recapped and forming a condensed list: the Five avoid, and the Four
Pursue.
Zizhang asked Confucius: “How does one qualify to
govern?” The Master said: “He who cultivates the five treasures and eschews the
four evils is fit to govern.” Zizhang said: “What are the five treasures?” The
Master said: “A gentleman is generous without having to spend; he makes people
work without making them groan; he has ambition but no rapacity; he has
authority but no arrogance; he I stern but not fierce.” Zizhang said: “How can
one be ‘generous without having to spend’?” The Master said: “If you let the
people pursue what is beneficial for them, aren’t you being generous without
having to spend? If you make people work only on tasks that are reasonable, who
will groan? If your ambition is humanity, and if you accomplish humanity, what
room is there left for rapacity? A gentleman treats equally the many and the
few, the humble and the great, he gives the same attention to all: has he not
authority without arrogance? A gentleman dresses correctly, his gaze is
straight, people look at him with awe: is he not stern without being fierce?”
Zizhang
said: “What are the four evils?” The Master said: “Terror, which rests on ignorance
and murder. Tyranny, which demands results without proper warning. Extortion,
which is conducted through contradictory orders. Bureaucracy, which begrudges
people their rightful entitlements.”
It would be worthwhile to analyze
all the words of this text and to compare them with the other similar content
of Analects. Hereby, I simply wish to
stress that this is a general recap of Confucius’ teachings. These same
teachings appear in numerous other passages in Analects, numerous enough to consider this passage as almost a kind of summary. For
a better understanding of this section of Analects
it would also be useful and important to examine further who Zizhang was.
III.
CHAPTER THREE is made
up of just three lines, which happen to be also the last three lines of Analects. It is a finale of the final
chapter. The three lines seem to me to be a meditated conclusion (a grand
finale!) to the whole work of Analects.
There could not be a more concise – but yet more profound and suitable - recap
of the whole contents of Confucius’ teachings than the final three lines of
Analects 20:
·
Confucius said: He who does not
understand fate is incapable of behaving like a gentleman.
·
He who does not understand the
rites is incapable of taking his stand.
·
He who does not understand words
is incapable of understanding men. (transl. Simon Leys, p. 101)
On this very concise chapter, the Brooks’ opinion, as
mentioned above, is that it was added in “the last moments in the life of the
Confucian School of Lu,” in 249 BCE.
I find no reason to attribute these last three lines to a later age (yet, to over
two centuries later), when they fit so well at the end of Analects! Again, contrary to the Brooks’ opinion, I find no reason
to imagine that they were not memorized by the school’s students, given that
they are powerfully dense in meaning, but extremely simple and parallel
sentences. If there ever was a passage suitable for memorizing, this was it!
20.3.1 The first of the three lines
concerns fate: He who does not understand
fate is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. The Brooks comment: How shall
we imagine these last lines to have been written? The acceptance of Fate might
be a realization of how constrained were the possibilities of the Analects group under imminent threat of
extinction, along with Lu itself, by Chu
armies. In my opinion, it is not the case here to imagine
hearing the sad sighs of the Confucian School’s headmaster facing the demise of
the Lu state and of the School as well, and hearing armed soldiers pressing at
the gate of his compound. Fate (ming)
is a basic component of Confucius’ weltanschauung.
It was a great personal inner achievement for him, when he finally – at age 50
- understood it (An. II, 4). It was also a basic part, and a leitmotiv, of his teachings. Fate
involves the whole religious and political thought of Confucius. Think of Tianming (Heaven’s will); think of the
decree of Heaven about who should become ruler, about which is the mission
entrusted to a ruler, and so forth. Why relegate thic concept to a later age,
to two centuries later?
In other words, Confucius states that a man who does
not know ming (fate) -- i.e. who does
not know that the throne belongs to a person due to Heaven’s will, and that the
charge is accompanied by a serious responsibility and mission (to distinguish
between good and bad, and to rectify human behavior in order to bring about a
just and happy social life) -- is not adequately prepared (is not fit) for a
role in politics.
In this line, actually, one finds not one but two
key words of the Confucian weltanschauung,
namely fate (ming) and gentleman (junzi). The gentleman (junzi) is the human ideal espoused by
Confucius. In the line of the political training offered by Confucius, it is
the ideal character of a person qualified for political responsibility. To be a
junzi is the prerequisite for a
person to be qualified to occupy a political position.
20.3.2 Now comes the second line, which concerns rites or propriety (li): He who does not understand the
rites is incapable of taking his stand. This is
another backbone of Confucius’ teaching activity. He was a rite specialist. He
had traveled near and far to learn about the correct rites of antiquity (and
the correct political and religious ideology, inherited from the ancients,
going together with them).
Regarding this line, Brooks notes: The
emphasis on li could be an
accommodation to life as it would have to be lived under the Age of Sywndz, the
philosopher of li, an age which even
before the final conquest was already upon them. Everybody
knows that Xunzi (Sywndz in Brooks’ graphs)
stressed the importance of rites. Is this a sufficient reason to sell this line
as belonging to the age of Xunzi? Not really. Rites are a dominating theme in
Xunzi’s philosophy, but they were equally important two centuries earlier, when
Confucius was alive.
20.3.2 states that whoever is not cultivated in rituals is not able to rule. In
Confucius’ mind, rites were not just external perfunctory actions. Knowledge of
rituals implied knowledge of correct human behavior, ethics, political
institutions, laws. It can be read also with a meaning closer to personal
character, such as An. VIII, 8: “Steady your course with ritual.” Yang Bojun
interprets: “Rites make me stand (li)
in social life.” Chichung Huang translates the sentence as “Establish yourself
with Rituals,” to mean that Confucius
here is mentioning the Book of Rites.
This is quite pertinent; it even leads us to think that the last three lines of
Analects could well be a reference to the three main textbooks used in Confucius’
school: the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, and the Book of Poetry. An interesting
consideration indeed!
20.3.3 Then we come to the last line (the last line of ch. 20, and also last of
the whole Analects!), that about
‘knowing words’: He who does not
understand words is incapable of understanding men. Understanding men is an
important quality in a candidate, a must for a person entering a political
career. If one does not understand words, he cannot understand men. If one
cannot understand men, how would he/she be a capable political leader? How will
he/she be able to evaluate what people tell him/her? How could he/she take the
right decisions? How could he/she understand which man is suitable for which
job or responsibility in the government of a country?
In this sentence, for ‘understanding words’ Confucius
implies a good degree of humanistic culture, of literary ability, so as to be
able to understand words (either spoken or written), knowledge of humanae litterae which would empower a
man (a junzi) to understand his
subjects as well as all other fellow human beings.
Brooks views this final line as trivial and
insignificant. Confucian thought should have ended “in a bang of new ideas.”
Instead, “The
final clause, about interactions among colleagues, seems to suggest that we
have here just one more guideline for the standard virtues in standard
situations. We should probably conclude, then, that Confucian thought ended not
with a bang of new ideas, whether efficacious or not, but with a whimper of
reiteration. Our original note pointed to the degree of advancement over the
position taken in the earliest Confucius’ saying, LY 4:1. We now ask about its
adequacy to the challenge of the year 0249. It was not enough; nothing would
have been enough. But the end might have had more intellectual distinction than
we feel safe in attributing to this saying.
No need to recall that “knowing words” (zhi yan) is an important goal in
Confucius’ teaching. Literary education, rhetoric, logic are all precious
preconditions to knowing “what is in man,” so that “one who does not know
speech has no way of knowing men.” (transl. Chichung Huang). Hereby, what is
meant is not “knowing the language” (that too of course needs to be known, it
is a preparatory step). The point is the ability to know what is in people’s minds.
In the Confucian logic vocabulary, yan
means judgments, propositions. But this is still the rudimentary step; in the
Confucian way of speaking, understanding words and sentences/statements of
people is just a way to reach an understanding of the character of the person
who is speaking (what kind of human being is he/she? what is in his/her heart?).
The best explanation of what “knowing words” means
is to be found in the book of Mencius:
Gongsun Chou asks Mencius: “What do you mean by
saying that you understand words (zhi yan). He replies: “When words are
one-sided, I know how the mind of the speaker is clouded over. When words are
extravagant, I know how the mind is fallen and sunk. When words are
all-depraved, I know how the mind has departed from principle. When words are
evasive, I know how the mind is at its wit’s end. These evils growing in the
mind, do injury to government, and, displayed in the government, are hurtful to
the conduct of affairs.” (Transl. Legge, 2A, 2:17)
As one can see, “knowing words” is a basic requisite
for a candidate to a position of leadership in a nation.
So,
the last three sentences bring us to view a recollection of the whole
curriculum of Confucius’ subjects of teaching. We know
that Confucius was competent, to a certain degree, in all the six subjects of
the ancient aristocratic learning curriculum: theology-philosophy (ming), rites-laws-institutions (li), and literary-oratorical ability (yan). At the same time, they refer to
the textbooks used by Confucius. Ancient traditions credited Confucius with
compiling the Book of Documents (Ming), the Book of Rites (Li), and
the Book of Odes (Yan). From the rich (and perhaps
seriously disorganized) collection of documents inherited from antiquity, he
selected the most meaningful of them and used them to expound what he
considered the most precious core of ancient wisdom, either in the field of
government (Book of Documents), or of
rituals (Book of Rites), or of
refined literary accomplishments (Book of
Odes). We are not sure Confucius did all these compilations, but we are
sure that he was teaching these subjects to his disciples.
Conclusion
If Analects
consist of a collection of random notes taken by the best students of the
political science course taught by Confucius, Analects 20 (the last chapter) is a good summary of that course. It
is made up of three parts, which correspond to the three sections of the
content of the course.
The first part (quotes from the Book of Documents) deals with the origin of political power. Where
does political power come from? Confucius’ doctrine is that power is invested
in an individual, but originates in Heaven. Political power is Heaven-ordained.
It comes to an individual through the choice-decision of a former ruler, as in
the case of Shun and Yu, or through fighting (military invasion, revolution,
and the like), as a felt mission to redress wrong situations.
The second part deals with the actual exercise of
power. What policies are to be implemented in order to attain good government?
The four things to do and the four things not to do, things that are mentioned
passim in many places of Analects.
The third part is the shortest, but also the most
pregnant with meaning. It can be viewed also as a final recap in itself of the
whole studying curriculum in Confucius’ school. Three bare-boned but quite
concise and complete sentences describe the three fundamental qualities every promising
young aspiring politician must have in order to qualify for his job:
understanding of Heaven’s ordinances; knowledge of rituals (the li), of those wise policies consecrated
by laws and traditions, which however may be changed when circumstances require
it for the well-being of the people; knowledge of words (literary culture and
others), which enables a man to grasp the meaning of the speech of various
people (and avoid mistakes in the choice of officials and in other momentous
decisions).
After all the observations
of the previous pages, it should be clear enough that Analects 20 appears to me as a rich summary of the whole ideology
attributed to Confucius. Therefore, it cannot be considered a worthless
collection of senseless quotations; neither do we find any ground to envision
it as a doomed beginning of a normal-length book of Analects, truncated by the
sudden invasion of the Chu army in 249 BCE.
As the other 19 books, Analects 20 is a contribution from some disciple or disciples, from
notes taken down while learning from Confucius (or remembered from his lessons
and jotted down after Confucius’ death). I believe it was put at the end of
Analects just because it works as a marvelous recap of Confucius’ teachings. In
my opinion, Analects 20 is a recap not just of the book titled Analects, but also of the whole teaching
career of Confucius. What Confucius loved to explain and hand down to his
disciples is recorded throughout all the 19 books of Analects, and is recapped again in its essence in Book 20, a summary presentation, which
is quite well-rounded and complete in itself. It goes from the theory of the
origin of political power (Heaven mandate, human responsibility) to the actual
practice of the art of rulership; it ends with three concise but powerful lines
about the basic qualities (three musts)
needed to enter political office in a worthy and dignified way. Even though we
have no way to prove it, the last three lines of Analects are a final note for his pupils, a note so powerful in its
concision that one is tempted to think of them as ipsissima verba from Confucius’ mouth.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL HINTS
Ames, Roger T. and Rogemont, Henry Jr., The Analects of Confucius, A Philosophical Translation, New York, Ballantine
Books, The Random House, 1998.
Brooks, E. Bruce, and Brooks, A. Taeko, The Original Analects, Sayings of Confucius and His Successors, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1997.
Huang, Chichung, The Analects of
Confucius, Oxford University Press, New York, 1997.
Leys, Simon, The Analects of
Confucius, New York: Norton & Co., 1997.
Qian, Mu, Lunyu xin jie (a new
explanation of Analects), Taipei, San Min Book Co., 1978 (4th ed.)
Van Norden, Bryan, ed., Confucius and the Analects, New Essays, Oxford University
Press, 2002.
And also works by James Legge, D. C. Lau, Makeham, John Robert Eno,
Arthur Waley, Xiao Gongquan, etc.
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