Welcome to the traditional Confucian curriculum. For the better part of a millennium, the Four Books served as the foundation of a classical education in East Asia, teaching thorough reading, the meaning of terms, sound reasoning, literary composition, ethics, and human relations. It also serves as a general introduction to Confucian thought. It consists of four classics:

1. Great Learning《大學》

2. The Discourses《論語》

3. The Book of Mengzi《孟子》

4. Doctrine of the Mean《中庸》

Herein are selections from an ongoing translation of Zhu Xi’s “Four Books with Collected Commentaries” by Daoxue Academy. For the complete work, including the prefaces, commentaries and footnotes, see the Four Books App for iOS…

Additional Resources:

See the Q&A for background information on the Four Books.

For other translations of the Four Books, a good starting point is Wing-tsit Chan’s partial translation in one hundred pages: Source Book pgs. 14 – 114. There is also Legge’s full translation with notes in over a thousand pages: The Four Books. Unfortunately, neither of these includes Zhu Xi’s Collected Commentaries, which is the proven method of study used in East Asia.

In studying texts, we must first understand the words being used, hence our handy guide “Learning of the Way: An Explanation of Terms” in the Four Books App. These explanations adhere to the orthodox interpretation.

For learning Classical Chinese (古文), which is not the same as modern Chinese, we recommend Stanford’s Classical Chinese Self-study Course. It is not difficult to learn some characters and basic grammar.

As you delve deeper into Classical Chinese, we recommend using A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese by Paul Kroll, available as an add-on in the Pleco app for iPhone.

For an overview of Chinese philosophy as a whole, in the words of the sages themselves, there is none better than Professor Wing-tsit Chan’s textbook A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, which is freely available as a PDF.

For an essay on how the Lunyu was branded in English as “Analects” by translator James Legge over 150 years ago, and why it is more properly titled “Discourses,” see The Analects of Confucius, a Rectification of Names.

For daily quotes from our translation of the Four Books with Collected Commentaries, follow Daoxue Academy on Twitter.