The Analects of Confucius is an anthology of brief passages that present the words of Confucius and his disciples,

Introduction

The Analects of Confucius is an anthology of brief passages that present the words of

Confucius and his disciples, describe Confucius as a man, and recount some of the events

of his life. The book may have begun as a collection by Confucius’s immediate disciples

soon after their Master’s death in 479 BCE. In traditional China, it was believed that its

contents were quickly assembled at that time, and that it was an accurate record; the Eng-

lish title, which means “brief sayings of Confucius,” reflects this idea of the text. (The

Chinese title, Lunyu 論語, means “collated conversations.”) Modern scholars generally

see the text as having been brought together over the course of two to three centuries, and

believe little if any of it can be viewed as a reliable record of Confucius’s own words, or

even of his individual views. Rather, much like the biblical Gospels, to which the text

bears some resemblance, the Analects offers an evolving record of the image of Confu-

cius and his ideas through from the changing standpoints of various branches of the

school of thought he founded.

This online translation is posted to make it easier to locate an English rendering of

this important text with some basic commentary. It has been prepared for use in under-

graduate teaching and is not meant to replace published scholarly editions. The interpre-

tations reflected are my own, and in some cases do not represent consensus readings (if

such exist – there are, and always have been, competing interpretations of many of the

most engaging passages in the text, starting from passage 1.1).

In this very brief introduction to the text, I will summarize a few features of Con-

fucius’s life and social environment, review some basic ways in which the component

parts of the Analects are dated by analysts, on a very general level, and note some par-

ticular issues concerning key terms and translation, and of personal names.

Confucius “Confucius” is the name by which English speakers know Kong Qiu 孔丘, born near a

small ducal state on the Shandong Peninsula in 551 BCE. Centuries earlier, a strong royal

state, known as the Zhou (founded in 1045 BCE), had sent members of its high aristocra-

cy to rule regions of its empire as hereditary lords, subjects of the Zhou king, but, so long

The Analects of Confucius