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 expanded to the Nine Classics, and by the Song to the Thirteen Classics. Throughout this period, commentaries were the principal means by which scholars interpreted these texts; He Yan’s commentary on the Lunyu, for instance, held dominance for nearly a thousand years. The result was a vast accumulation of classics and commentaries, yet without a critical selection and synthesis. This synthesis came from a Song scholar named Zhu Xi, whose Four Books 四書 would hold dominance across East Asia for the next six hundred years.

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What are the Four Books?

The Four Books constitute in truth a single classic. Master Zhu formed a comprehensive curriculum by selecting key texts, writing commentaries to interpret and bridge their principles, seamlessly weaving in quotes from the literary giants of Song, and publishing them as the Four Books with Collected Commentaries 四書章句集注 in 1190.

He advised his pupils, “first read the Great Learning 大學 to establish the framework for the Confucian Way, next the Discourses 論語 to ground its fundamentals, then the Book of Mengzi 孟子 to observe its development, and finally the Doctrine of the Mean 中庸 to strive for the subtle insights.” Now there 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: teaching thorough reading, the meaning of terms, sound reasoning, literary composition, ethics, and human relations.

In time the Four Books supplanted the Five Classics, becoming the basis of education. The scholar Wing-tsit Chan said, “As a result, 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?

There is no real equivalent to the commentary tradition in Western literature. In East Asia, the Classics have always been studied through the lens of their traditional commentaries. In fact, the commentaries are works of art in themselves, not merely clarifying but evolving the concepts, and in many cases surpassing the original text. Without the Wang Bi commentaries, one cannot know the Daodejing; without the Guo Xiang commentaries, one cannot know the Zhuangzi; without Zhu Xi's collected commentaries, one cannot know the Four Books. Moreover, it would not go too far to say that the Four Books would not even exist without Zhu Xi—the text and commentary fundamentally cannot be spoken of as separate.

The Collected Commentaries are a kind of temporal dialogue in which the masters of the Song, engaged in their Way Studies (daoxue 道學), conversed with the ancient sages and worthies across the centuries. As the title suggests, the commentaries include quotes from the leading scholars of the Song, such as the Cheng Brothers and their pupils Yin Tun, Yang Shi, and Xie Liangzuo, among others. Chinese philosophy is not a monologue, nor did it end 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 Middle Ages, scholars grew weary of the flowery prose popular since the Han dynasty and launched a classical prose revival (guwen yundong 古文運動). The ancient texts can be quite cryptic, but by the time of the Song the language had developed more precise grammar to make meanings clear. In reading the Four Books with Collected Commentaries, one reads the ancient passage 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 exam at age eighteen, quite an uncommon feat, and served capably as 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 texts over the course of his career, devoting forty years to refining his greatest innovation, the Four Books.

During this time he held famous debates with rival philosopher Lu Xiangshan, lectured to the emperor, restored Confucian academies, and took advantage of new Song printing technologies to transmit Confucian texts. Though his reputation grew, it was not without controversy; there was even a petition for his execution in his later years. After his passing, his works continued to spread, his reputation was restored, and he was posthumously given the title Duke of Literature 文公. As the Kangxi Emperor said, “Even if the sages were to return, they could not surpass his achievements.”

Among the 1.5 billion people in East Asia, everyone knows the name of Zhu Xi. He is, one could say, the Eastern equivalent of Aristotle. For whatever reason, there seems to be little knowledge of him in the English-speaking world.

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Why is this translation needed?

At this point, 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 we still do not have a complete English translation.

Existing English translations of the Four Books, however good, translate only the ancient verses and not the actual text that became a canonized classic. 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 remain fixated on the outdated commentaries, such as those by He Yan, which merely gloss the meaning of the verse. In Zhu Xi's classic we find something quite different: a text that transmits a set of heuristics for each person to apply in daily practice, heuristics tested over centuries.

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 which are mostly translated according to Zhu Xi commentaries.

- Wing-tsit Chan, Neo-Confucian Terms Explained: This is a required text to understand key terminology, as well as the height of translation skill.

- Wing-tsit Chan, Reflections on Things at Hand: An anthology of Song Confucian quotes by the Cheng Brothers and others, gathered by Zhu Xi.

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

- 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.