Comments on: Teaching Confucius

By: A Ku Indeed! » Archive » Will the Real Confucius Please Stand Up?

A Ku Indeed! » Archive » Will the Real Confucius Please Stand Up? — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:14:28 +0000

[...] at The Useless Tree and at Frog in a Well there’s a discussion about how to approach the teaching of Confucius. Since I’m teaching [...]

By: C. W. Hayford

C. W. Hayford — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:57:53 +0000

I have used films such as “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman” to get good discussions of how Confucian values — well, maybe: “the values of the one formerly known as Confucius” — are being constantly revalued and reinvented. After all, he said “make it new.”

By: Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 02:24:33 +0000

Chuck,
I would certainly not use Brooks translation in a Yao to Mao class. In fact the only books I tend to use in the early part of that class are Songs or Zhuangzi. Pretty much any translation of Analects is going to be rough going for them, as there is no real way to get them into the text. I did use Brooks in an upper division course and it was o.k. I lost some of them, but I think it was good for those who put in the effort. They were actually less annoyed by his romanization than I was, since they were less invested in pinyin.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:46:36 +0000

Coming late to the conversation — I am not an expert (far from!) on early China. I have been trying to incorporate some of the Brooks’ points about the history of the text into my lectures. But particularly in Chinese Civilization/ Yao to Mao type surveys, I just have a hard time imagining using this translation. At the point of the course when we get to Confucius, students are still struggling with any form of romanization (and the Wade-Giles issue remains a problem). I also find the comparisons to other thinkers more confusing than helpful (especially for students). For example, on page 13 of The Original Analects “Rvn is not niceness, though it evolves in that direction. It confers a capacity to judge others (William James saw this as the end of education; Kallen James 287).” Or see p. 87 comparisons to England.

I’m wondering how those who use the work deal with these kinds of issues in teaching.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:11:45 +0000

Agreed. Different classes require different sorts of engagement with such texts…

By: Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:21:12 +0000

I think I agree with everybody (Sam, Charles and Chris) that the hard core “say nothing” position does not work for teaching. (In Brooks’ defense he was not talking about teaching, but about publishing, which I think is a different thing.) On the other hand I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with outright ignoring the nature of the text. In some contexts that works fine. If you are teaching a history course on Late Imperial China and want to do some “Confucianism” the Zhu Xi version may be your best bet. Likewise in a philosophy class you might well point out that Han thinkers obscured a lot of the complexity of the Warring States and then plow on like it does not matter.

On the other hand, if you want to teach the pre-Han period, either in a history class or somewhere else, I think that you have to get into the composition of the texts. In part this is because as a historian it bothers me to see textbooks that treat the period like Confucius, Xunzi and Laozi were all sitting around a table having a debate, but even more because I think looking at the texts as accretions helps students to enter them.

Analects, at least for me is a hard text to make much of with students. It’s not like Laozi, a text with a clear unitary meaning that is instantly apparent once you understand it.(Well, for some of us anyway ) Looking at Analects the way Brooks does, (simplifying a lot) as a text that starts in its earliest layers with a concern with personal behavior, grows more concerned with state affairs and then consoles those out of office gives it a bit of structure that I think helps. I actually used Brooks’ translation in the Early China class, and it served as sort of a history of the Warring States period. It was not disastrous. (Well, not totally disastrous. I think it would have worked better with the group I had in that class the year before.) I think you –have- to get into these issues in a fine-grained enough context and –should not- in a broad-brush context. Rice Paddies, I think, is in the process of crossing the line.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:54:56 +0000

Great question! Caught it at Sam’s place. I put up a response of my own at mine.

http://oolongiv.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/will-the-real-confucius-please-stand-up/

By: Will the Real Confucius Please Stand Up? « A Ku Indeed!

Will the Real Confucius Please Stand Up? « A Ku Indeed! — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:49:58 +0000

[...] 24, 2008 by Chris Over at The Useless Tree and at Frog in a Well there’s a discussion about how to approach the teaching of Confucius. Since I’m teaching [...]