Four Books Collection Notes II: Mencius

Author: (Song) Zhu Xi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The Four Books, comprising The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and Mencius, is a collective name for the most renowned classics of Confucianism and a mandatory reading for ancient Chinese scholars, exerting profound influence. The famous Southern Song Dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi drew upon and utilized the research achievements of his predecessors. While compiling annotations from past scholars, he also proposed his own unique insights to articulate the essence of Neo-Confucianism, thereby forming Collected Annotations on the Four Books (also known as Annotations on the Four Books). Annotations on the Four Books was a lifelong dedication of Zhu Xi, becoming his most celebrated masterpiece and an important research document for Neo-Confucianism during the Song and Ming dynasties. As a result, its editions are numerous and widely circulated. Among them, the annotation by Wu Ying and Wu Zhizhong father and son during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty is considered one of the better existing editions. For this compilation, it was used as the base text, with reference to other popular editions, selecting the best and following suit. To facilitate modern readers' reading and reference, in addition to adopting horizontal simplified characters, special annotations interspersed within the original text have been moved to the end of each section for concentrated annotation, with annotation numbers corresponding to the original text.