Best products from r/Confucianism
We found 3 comments on r/Confucianism discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 3 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.
1. The Four Books: The Basic Teachings of the Later Confucian Tradition
- Used Book in Good Condition
Features:
▼ Read Reddit mentions
Read The Analects by the man himself, Confucius. That should give you some very great insight into the core concepts. After that you could read the rest of the Four Books which The Analects is a part of. Then if you want to get serious you could read Xunzi that has a different view on Confucianism. But starting with The Analects is essential if you're new to Confucianism.
This is the book I started with LINK. It doesn't contain whole books, but rather the most important extracts from the Four Books with commentary from the author explaining the extracts. It's extremely useful and probably what would suit your specifications.
I'm not a follower of Confucianism myself, and I don't think that many people are today. But it does contain some valuable philosophy that is relevant for today. I've read a lot of books about Confucianism (The Four Books, The Five Classics and Xunzi). You get a really great insight into Eastern thinking with these works. Good luck to you.
There are a ton of starting points.
At the core you have:
Great Learning - Chapter from The Book of Rites, small Confucius section with 9 commentary sections from his disciple, Zengzi.
Doctrine of the Mean - written by the grandson of Confucius and adopted into the c
Analects - pure Confucianism, every word supposedly taken from the works of his disciples. It's very important to get a good commentary on this text. Lau is the traditional version and Dawson is generally picked as the next best. There's also a fantastic commentary from Neo-Confucianist Zhu Xi translated by Daniel Gardner.
Mencius - A later scholar, who learned from Zengzi. He had a slightly different take on things. A must read if you want to study the evolution of Confucianism through the ages.
In addition I would add my former professor's work:
Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch'en Liang's Challenge to Chu Hsi if you want to see the conflicts and divisions in Confucian thought.
I highly recommend Edward Slingerland's translation of the Analects because he shares verse by verse commentaries from many of the famous historical Chinese commentaries on the text. This will greatly help you understand the context in which the Analects was written, as well as help you enter into the dialogue and conversation that the Analects was meant to provoke. As far as I'm aware, Slingerland's translation is the only english translation that gives a wide variety of famous historical Chinese commentaries on the Analects, but translated into English.