Four Books

What is the History of the Classics?

The Five Classics 五經 were canonized in the early Han dynasty as the foundation of Chinese learning. By the Tang the canon had grown to the Nine Classics, and by the Song to the Thirteen Classics. Throughout this period scholars interpreted the Classics through commentaries; He Yan’s third-century commentary on the Lunyu, for instance, was the standard for nearly a thousand years. The result was a vast accumulation of classics and commentaries, but no critical selection or synthesis of them. That synthesis came from a Song scholar named Zhu Xi, whose Four Books 四書 would hold sway across East Asia for the next six hundred years.

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What are the Four Books?

The Four Books are in truth a single classic. To form a complete curriculum, Master Zhu selected four key texts, wrote commentaries that interpret them and bridge their principles, wove in the words of the leading scholars of the Song, and in 1190 published the whole as the Four Books with Collected Commentaries 四書章句集注.

He advised his pupils, “first read the Great Learning 大學 to set the framework for the Confucian Way, next the Discourses of the School of Master Kong 論語 to establish its foundation, then the Book of Mengzi 孟子 to observe its development, and finally the Doctrine of the Mean 中庸 to seek out the subtle points of the ancients.” Here at last was a coherent course of study.

This “Great Synthesis” 集大成 would serve not merely as an introduction to Confucian thought for new generations, but as the foundation of a classical education, one that taught thorough reading, the meaning of terms, sound reasoning, literary composition, ethics, and human relations.

In time the Four Books displaced the Five Classics at the center of education, and from 1313 to 1905 they were the basis of the civil service examinations. “As a result,” wrote the scholar Wing-tsit Chan, “they have exercised far greater influence on Chinese life and thought in the last six hundred years than any other Classic,” an influence that extended to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Southern Seas.

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What are commentaries?

The commentary tradition has no real equivalent in Western literature. In East Asia the Classics have always been studied together with their traditional commentaries, and the commentaries are works of art in their own right: they do not merely clarify the concepts but develop them, and in many cases they surpass the original text. Without Wang Bi’s commentary, one cannot know the Daodejing; without Guo Xiang’s commentary, one cannot know the Zhuangzi; without Zhu Xi’s collected commentaries, one cannot know the Four Books. It would not go too far to say that the Four Books would not even exist without Zhu Xi—the text and commentary cannot be spoken of as separate.

The Collected Commentaries are a sort of temporal dialogue, in which the masters of the Song, engaged in the Learning of the Way (daoxue 道學, “way studies”), converse with the ancient sages and worthies. As the title suggests, the commentaries quote the leading scholars of the Song, such as the Cheng brothers and their pupils Yin Tun, Yang Shi, and Xie Liangzuo. Chinese philosophy is not a monologue, nor did it end with the Zhou in 256 BC. It is a living and evolving tradition, carried forward through commentaries.

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What is Classical Chinese?

These texts are written in Classical Chinese (guwen 古文, literally “ancient writing”), a language distinct from Modern Chinese (putonghua 普通話, “Mandarin”). It is formal yet sparse, clear and direct, with mirrored character patterns called “parallelism.” In the Tang, scholars grew weary of the flowery prose that had prevailed since the Han and launched a revival of the classical style (guwen yundong 古文運動). The ancient texts can be cryptic, but by the Song the language had developed a more precise grammar that makes meanings clear. In the Four Books with Collected Commentaries, each ancient passage is followed by commentary in this evolved style.

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Who is Zhu Xi?

Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) passed the jinshi civil service examination at nineteen, a rare feat, and served capably as assistant magistrate of Tong’an in Fujian, but chose instead to retire to his books. He spent much of his life in temple guardianships, nominal posts that afforded him the peace to study the Classics. He wrote nearly a hundred works, and devoted forty years to refining his greatest innovation, the Four Books.

In these years he held famous debates with the philosopher Lu Jiuyuan, his great rival, lectured to the emperor, restored Confucian academies, and used the new Song printing to spread Confucian texts. His reputation grew, but not without controversy: in 1196 his teachings were banned, and there was even a petition for his execution. After his death his works continued to spread, his reputation was restored, and he was given the posthumous title Duke of Culture 文公. As the Kangxi Emperor said, “Even if the sages were to return, they could not surpass his achievements.”

Every one of the billion people in East Asia knows the name of Zhu Xi. He is, one could say, the Aristotle of the East. Yet in the English-speaking world he is scarcely known.

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Why is this translation needed?

By now the answer should be self-evident. No scholar would deny that the Four Books is the most culturally influential classic of the last thousand years, yet it still has no complete English translation.

Existing English translations of the Four Books, however good, translate only the ancient verses, not the text that was actually canonized. The ancient Lunyu (“Discourses”) is simply not the same text as the Lunyu jizhu (“Discourses with Collected Commentaries”), which became the orthodox interpretation and shaped East Asian thought. Many Western scholars still rely on the outdated commentaries, such as He Yan’s, which merely paraphrase the meaning of the verse. In Zhu Xi’s classic we find something quite different: a text that hands down a set of heuristics, tested over centuries, for each person to apply in daily practice.

When Westerners cut a thousand years out of history, it should be no surprise that they cannot understand East Asia. As Wing-tsit Chan said, “Chinese philosophy is intended not for knowledge for its own sake, but to support a way of life the conclusions and convictions of which are arrived at not through idle speculation but through actual handling of human affairs.”

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Reading Recommendations:

- Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy: See chapters 2-5 for selected verses from the Four Books, mostly translated according to Zhu Xi’s commentaries.

- Wing-tsit Chan, Neo-Confucian Terms Explained: Required reading for the key terminology, and a model of translation at its height.

- Wing-tsit Chan, Reflections on Things at Hand: An anthology of sayings by the Cheng brothers and other Song Confucians, compiled by Zhu Xi.

- Irene Bloom, Mencius: A complete translation of the Book of Mengzi by Chan’s disciple, which sits well with the works above.

- James Legge, The Four Books: A complete translation of the verses from the 1890s, which almost always follows the orthodox interpretation set by Zhu Xi.