Recent Directions in Western Scholarship on the Confucian Classics
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中國文哲研究集刊 第三十期 2007年 3 月 頁365∼397 中央研究院中國文哲研究所 Review Essay Recent Directions in Western Scholarship on the Confucian Classics and Their Commentaries: A Review Essay Timothy D. BAKER, Jr. Assistant Professor, National Taiwan Dong Hwa University Confucius and the Analects: New Essays. Edited by Bryan W. Van Norden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 342. Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition. By Daniel K. Gardner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Pp. x + 226. Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects. By John Makeham. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003. Pp. xi + 457. A s the earliest texts to attract scholarly attention in the West, the Confucian classics were long the mainstay of European sinological interest, although in the period roughly from the First World War to the mid-1980’s there was a marked decline of interest in this topic. However, in the mid-80’s a renewed interest in the Confucian classics arose, initially centered on the old standbys of scholarly and popular Western interest, the Yijing 易經, together with its Daoist counterpart, the Daodejing 道德經. To China scholars in the West, the subsequent resurgence of interest in the Analects can hardly have escaped notice. Since the beginning of the 1990’s, including reissues of earlier translations, over ten new or revised English translations of this classic have been published. 1 Although it is, of all the Confucian classics, the one 1 The more signi cant of these are as follows: D. C. Lau, trans., Confucius: The Analects (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1979); Simon Leys, trans., The Analects of Confucius (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997); Chichung Huang, trans., The Analects of Confucius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., trans., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Pub. Group, 1998); David -365-
