The Analects

⚖The case for it

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. That line is what readers carry out and use. Confucius comes through drier and more sarcastic than expected, giving different students opposite answers to the same question depending on who is asking, so “the strong and complex individuality of the Master is the backbone” of a book with no argument in it. It only coheres on a second pass. Annotated editions do the real work here, and readers name Annping Chin and Simon Leys. Read it slowly, since “more than 20 pages at once would do the book a disservice.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The sayings sit beside each other with nothing joining them, so the book “floats along from parable to aphorism, with no apparent connection.” A bare public-domain edition makes it worse, since without footnotes the references to particular disciples and events go opaque. The same handful of virtues get restated across hundreds of passages without developing, and instructions on how meat should be cut sit next to material presented as wisdom. The politics are frankly hierarchical and women barely appear. “For every passable quote a dozen gobbledygook.”

— the honest librarian

2h

honest hours

3

sittings