"The Analects of Confucius" is a compilation of the words and deeds of Confucius, a thinker in the Spring and Autumn Period. The pronunciation of "Lun" in "
The Analects of Confucius" is (ㄌㄨㄣˊ)", which means compilation and compilation, and "language" means discourse and speech, such as "Guoyu" and "Xinyu", which together refer to speech compilation. "Hanshu·Yiwenzhi" said: "In "The Analects of Confucius", Confucius responded to his disciples, people at the time, and his disciples talked with each other, and then he heard the words of his master. At that time, each of his disciples had their own records. It was compiled, so it is called "The Analects of Confucius."
"The Analects of Confucius" involves many aspects, including the Confucian philosophy of governing the country, human relations, personal morality, social outlook in the pre-Qin period, and even the experiences of Confucius and his disciples. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty "abolished all schools of thought and only respected Confucianism", it has been revered as "the jurisdiction of the Five Classics and the throat of the Six Arts".
In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi combined "The Great Learning", "The Analects of Confucius", "Mencius", and "The Doctrine of the Mean" into the "Four Books", which
increased the status of "The Analects of Confucius" among the Confucian classics. During the Yanyou period of the Yuan Dynasty, the imperial examination began to use the "Four Books" to select scholars. From then on until the implementation of the Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty and the abolition of the imperial examinations, "The Analects of Confucius" has always been the golden rule for scholars.
