An approachable edition of Mencius’ philosophy that makes his wit and wisdom relevant for a new age.
An annotated edition of a classic Chinese philosophical treatise, which aims to explain ancient wisdom to modern readers.
Li, who previously published an edition of Confucius’ analects, presents a new translation of a collection of Confucian teachings and dialogues, written by the sage Mencius and his disciples around the year 300 B.C.E. Composed during China’s Warring States period when the country was divided into petty squabbling kingdoms, the text consists mainly of conversations between Mencius and various interlocutors, including some teachers of other philosophical traditions and some kings and feudal lords seeking—and often then ignoring—Mencius’ advice on ethics and policy. Mencius’ replies flesh out his version of Confucian morality, centered on the four virtues of Ren (love and humanity), Yi (righteous action), Li (observation of morally edifying social norms) and Zhi (wisdom); he teaches that people are innately drawn to these virtues, but that they must also be cultivated through education and reflection. Other topics include filial piety and devotion to family, good governance—stressing that a ruler must serve the people rather than the people serving the ruler—and tax policy that focused on keeping taxes as low as possible. Li’s introduction presents Mencius’ biography in the context of his time, and he follows each section of the original text with annotations explaining Mencius’ references and the historical background of the philosopher’s encounters with intellectuals and potentates. He also restates Mencius’ more obscure points in terms that modern readers will recognize: “You…see a pregnant woman entering the [subway] car. Ren tells you to prevent her from falling. Yi tells you to give up your seat and give it to the woman. Li tells you to politely invite the woman to take your seat.”
Although there are sometimes infelicities in his wording—“Emperor Shun wanted to have a kind father who wanted to kill him instead”—Li’s straightforward, workmanlike translation ably conveys Mencius’ style over the course of this book, which ranges from Delphic moralizing to tart aphorisms (“a gift without a valid reason is a bribe”) and exasperated lectures (“what you are currently doing is like trying to find fish by climbing up a tree”). When writing in his own voice, Li’s commentary is informative and lucid, though sometimes dry and repetitive: “According to Mencius, human beings…can act according to their instinct like animals, and can also act against it according to their moral conscience....Human beings are superior to animals because they have the autonomy and freedom to act beyond their animal instincts and according to their moral conscience.” However, he also has his eye out for droll applications of Mencian lore to up-to-date concerns. (“He was a man of limited talents…this was enough to cost his life,” Mencius muses of one figure, prompting Li’s punchline that it’s “a reminder for corporate executives”). The end result presents readers with a nice blend of scholarly erudition and occasional flights of imaginative interpretation.
An approachable edition of Mencius’ philosophy that makes his wit and wisdom relevant for a new age.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2021
ISBN: 979-8985120400
Page Count: 579
Publisher: PublishDrive
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A valiant effort to explain and make peace with war’s awesome consequences for human beings.
A manual for soldiers or anyone interested in what can happen to mind, body and spirit in the extreme circumstances of war.
Decorated Vietnam veteran Marlantes is also the author of a bestselling novel (Matterhorn, 2010), a Yale graduate and Rhodes scholar. His latest book reflects both his erudition and his battle-hardness, taking readers from the Temple of Mars and Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey into the hell of combat and its grisly aftermath. That Marlantes has undertaken such a project implies his acceptance of war as a permanent fact of human life. We go to war, he says, “reluctantly and sadly” to eliminate an evil, just as one must kill a mad dog, “because it is a loathsome task that a conscious person sometimes has to do.” He believes volunteers rather than conscripts make the best soldiers, and he accepts that the young, who thrill at adventure and thrive on adrenaline, should be war’s heavy lifters. But apologizing for war is certainly not one of the strengths, or even aims, of the book. Rather, Marlantes seeks to prepare warriors for the psychic wounds they may endure in the name of causes they may not fully comprehend. In doing that, he also seeks to explain to nonsoldiers (particularly policymakers who would send soldiers to war) the violence that war enacts on the whole being. Marlantes believes our modern states fail where “primitive” societies succeeded in preparing warriors for battle and healing their psychic wounds when they return. He proposes the development of rituals to practice during wartime, to solemnly pay tribute to the terrible costs of war as they are exacted, rather than expecting our soldiers to deal with them privately when they leave the service. He believes these rituals, in absolving warriors of the guilt they will and probably should feel for being expected to violate all of the sacred rules of civilization, could help slow the epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans.
A valiant effort to explain and make peace with war’s awesome consequences for human beings.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1992-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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