Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong

by Roger T. Ames (Translator), David L. Hall (Translator)

The Zhongyong--translated here as Focusing the Familiar--has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western civilization.

With this new translation David Hall and Roger Ames provide a distinctly philosophical interpretation of the Zhongyong, remaining attentive to the semantic and conceptual nuances of the text to account for its central place within classical Chinese literature. They present the text in such a way as to provide Western philosophers and other intellectuals access to a set of interpretations and arguments that offer new insights into issues and concerns common to both Chinese and Western thinkers. In addition to the annotated translation, a glossary of terms gives in concise form important senses of the terms that play a key role in the argument of the Zhongyong. An appendix addresses some of the more technical issues relevant to the understanding of both the history of the text and the history of its English translations. Here the translators introduce readers to the best contemporary textual studies of the Zhongyong and make use of the most recent archaeological discoveries in China to place the work within its own intellectual context.

Genres: China

182 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Ethan Rogers]

This is a high quality translation of the final and perhaps most difficult to read of the Four Books that made up the later canon of Confucian education. Roughly half of the volume is taken up by the editors' essay on the philosophy of the text. Basically, Hall and Ames hold that, like all Chinese philosophy, the Zhongyong is based on a process metaphysics which is opposed to Western substance metaphysics. Chinese philosophy apparently lacks Western foibles like the "representational theory of truth." The metaphysical interpretation licenses some distinctive translations like rendering 独, often taken to signify how one behaves by oneself including in ones own mind, as "uniqueness," because the Chinese have no "radical subjectivity." Frankly, don't feel that the editors make the meaning of terms like this very clear, and I am suspicious of efforts to paint everything Chinese as based on a distinctive kind of metaphysics. What does it really mean to say the the gentleman is watchful over his "uniqueness"? I recommend the translation but perhaps not the essay. I also recommend comparing Hall and Ames with James Legge's translation and extensive commentary in the first volume of his Chinese Classics.

[Christopher Porzenheim]

Of the four classic works of Confucianism, I found this one, the Zhongyong, the least interesting, because I am less interested in the metaphysical and cosmological speculation which takes up most of the philosophical focus in this work. The Zhongyong also references the Shijing even more frequently, and while the editors do a good job explaining why, that didn't inspire any more interest to me.

Really, instead of this, I'd rather reread the Analects or Mencius.