Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics - Softcover

Chin, Annping

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300151187 ISBN 13: 9780300151183

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

A masterful account of the political life and intellectual development of the moral thinker who has remained a powerful force in China up to the present day

For more than two thousand years, Confucius (551–479 B.C.) has been a fundamental part of China's history. His influence as a moral thinker remains powerful to this day. Yet despite his fame and the perennial interest in his life and teachings, Confucius the man has been elusive, and no definitive biography has emerged. In this book, the scholar and writer Annping Chin negotiates centuries of reconstructions, guess-work, and numerous Chinese texts in order to establish an absorbing and original account of the thinker's life and legacy. She shows with new insight how Confucius lived and thought, his habits and inclinations, his relation to his contemporaries, his work as a teacher and as a counsellor, his worries about the world and the generations to come.

Chin brings the historical Confucius within reach so that he can lead us into his idea of the moral and explain his timeless teachings on family and politics, culture and learning. Confucius is the culmination of years of research, a book that makes an important and fascinating contribution to biography and Chinese history.

About this title

About the Author:

Ann-Ping Chin received her Ph.D. in Chinese Thought from Columbia University. Formerly on the faculty at Wesleyan University, she now teaches in the history department at Yale. She is the author of four previous books.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300151187
• ISBN 13: 9780300151183
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288