The Four Books with Annotations - I: The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects

Author: (Song) Zhu Xi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The Four Books refers to the combined title of The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and Mencius. They are the most renowned classics of Confucianism and essential reading for ancient Chinese scholars, exerting a profound influence. The famous Southern Song Dynasty Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi drew upon and utilized the research achievements of his predecessors. While compiling annotations from previous 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 versions 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 extant editions. For this edition, it was used as the base text, with reference to other popular editions to select the best and follow suit. To facilitate modern readers' reading and reference, in addition to adopting horizontal simplified characters, the original text annotations were specially moved to the end of each section for concentrated annotations, with annotation numbers corresponding to the original text.