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A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian AnalectsTerms, Concept and Concept-Clusters

A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects: Terms, Concept and Concept-Clusters [Every culture has a vocabulary denoting core concepts for describing, analyzing and evaluating human conduct, long ago as well as today. In contemporary English that vocabulary tends to cluster around the term “morals” and includes such other terms as “freedom,” “ought,” “rights,” “liberty,” “reason,” “obligation,” “choice,” “dilemma,” “evil,” “objective/subjective,” “right/wrong,” “individual,” “duty” and several related terms. Without these terms a discussion of moral issues could not take place. Unfortunately for any and all efforts to speed read the Analects for its moral insights, none of these terms clustered around the concept of “morals” has a close lexical equivalent in classical Chinese, and hence, in a very significant sense, Confucius should not be described as a “moral philosopher” in the contemporary English meaning of that expression, for imposing our current concept-cluster on his text will only eventuate in seeing him as a well-meaning preacher at best, as a muddled or hopelessly naive thinker at worst.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian AnalectsTerms, Concept and Concept-Clusters

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-45414-3
Pages
17 –20
DOI
10.1057/9781137303394_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Every culture has a vocabulary denoting core concepts for describing, analyzing and evaluating human conduct, long ago as well as today. In contemporary English that vocabulary tends to cluster around the term “morals” and includes such other terms as “freedom,” “ought,” “rights,” “liberty,” “reason,” “obligation,” “choice,” “dilemma,” “evil,” “objective/subjective,” “right/wrong,” “individual,” “duty” and several related terms. Without these terms a discussion of moral issues could not take place. Unfortunately for any and all efforts to speed read the Analects for its moral insights, none of these terms clustered around the concept of “morals” has a close lexical equivalent in classical Chinese, and hence, in a very significant sense, Confucius should not be described as a “moral philosopher” in the contemporary English meaning of that expression, for imposing our current concept-cluster on his text will only eventuate in seeing him as a well-meaning preacher at best, as a muddled or hopelessly naive thinker at worst.]

Published: Nov 5, 2015

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