The Asian Studies Program presents
Confucius Moving to the West
A talk by
Fr. Thierry Meynard, S.J.
Director of the Beijing
Center for Chinese Studies
Professor of Philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University
Monday, October 22, 2012
11:50am-12:50pm, Cowell Hall 313
Since the 17th
century the Chinese classics have been making their way to the West, making
them not only the classics of China, but gradually causing them to become
classics worldwide. Here we will try to understand the beginnings of the travel
of Chinese classics to the West, how Western people first read, understood,
translated and disseminated the Analects,
causing this book to become, in the eyes of Western people, the text best able
to represent Chinese culture. The first edition of the Analects in the West is part of
a book that can be seen as an encyclopedia of Chinese thought, titled Confucius Sinarum Philosophus ("Confucius
the Chinese Philosopher") (Paris, 1687). This book
systematically introduced the pre-Qin hundred schools, the pre-Qin Confucian
school, Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming [Song Ming Rujia], Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism. In addition to
the translation of the Analects,
it also includes translations of theGreat
Learning [Daxue],
and the Doctrine of the Mean [Zhongyong].
Co-sponsored by the Chinese Studies program and the USF Center for the Pacific Rim