The Four Books constitute in truth a single classic. It was the Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200) who selected these four works—the Great Learning, the Discourses (or Analects), the Book of Mengzi (or Mencius), and the Doctrine of the Mean—and over the course of forty years composed his Collected Commentaries, elucidating their meaning and unifying their scattered principles into a coherent model of thought. In 1190 he published the result, arranged in a sequence of study, as the “Four Books with Collected Commentaries” (Sishu zhangju jizhu 四書章句集注),¹ the work presented here.²

Within these pages the student reads from a great concert of ancient and medieval Confucian thinkers; their subtle words and broad principles, once scattered across fifteen hundred years, are now gathered in a single text—tradition calls this the Great Synthesis (ji dacheng 集大成). In time the Four Books supplanted the Five Classics, becoming the foundation of the educational system. “As a result,” said 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,”³ an influence that extended to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Southern Seas. Thus it is most fitting that the English-speaking world should possess a translation of this essential classic.⁴

To be sure, the stand-alone verses of the four books have been translated numerous times. But that is not how these texts have traditionally been studied in East Asia. For the commentaries are not merely annotations but, together with the ancient texts, form a complete curriculum, one which became the foundation of learning, from village schools to the civil service examinations, and which fixed their orthodox interpretation. Master Zhu’s commentary is the unifying force that binds these passages into a single classic.

What follows is this Great Synthesis, which serves not merely as an introduction to Confucian thought but as the foundation of a classical education—teaching thorough reading, the meaning of terms, sound reasoning, literary composition, ethics, and human relations.

— Daoxue Academy

四書者，實一經也。大儒朱熹擇此四書：大學、論語、孟子、中庸。定其學習次第，四十年著集注，明其義理，會通散義，成一貫之思想體系。淳熙十七年刊行四書章句集注，即今所呈之書。學者於此得讀古今儒賢薈萃之文，其微言大義，散於千五百年間者，今聚於一編。此所謂「集大成」也。其後四書代五經而為教學之本。學者陳榮捷言：「故近六百年來，其於中國人生思想之影響，遠過諸經。」此影響及於朝鮮、日本、越南、南洋。故英語世界得此要典譯行，實所宜也。夫四書各篇之西譯固多有之，然東亞傳統讀書之法不如是也。蓋註疏非僅訓詁，與古文共成完備之課程，為學習之根本，自鄉塾至科舉，而定此諸篇正統之解釋。朱子之功，在會通諸文，合為一經。以下即此集大成，非僅儒學入門之道，實乃經典教育之本，教以：熟讀、字義、明辨、文辭、窮理、明倫。道學學堂謹序