The Four Books with Annotations - Part Two: Mencius (Illustrated and Annotated)

Author: Zhu Xi (Song Dynasty)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The Four Books, comprising The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and Mencius, are a collective name for Confucianism's most renowned classics and are essential reading for ancient Chinese scholars, exerting a profound influence. The famous Southern Song Dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi drew upon and utilized the research of his predecessors, compiling their annotations while proposing his own unique insights to elucidate 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 reflects Zhu Xi's lifelong dedication and stands as his most celebrated masterpiece, as well as a crucial research document for the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties. Consequently, its editions are numerous and widely disseminated. Among them, the annotations by Wu Ying and Wu Zhizhong father and son from the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty are considered among the best in the current editions. For this compilation, this edition 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 note numbers corresponding to the original text.