oftheClassics绘事后素经典解释与哲学研究.PDF

Dao (2013) 12:253–255 DOI 10.1007/s11712-013-9319-0 Fang, Xudong 方旭東, The Painting Comes After the Plain Groundwork: The Interpretations and Philosophical Studies of the Classics 繪事後素 :經典解釋與哲學研究 Beijing 北京: Peking University Press 北京大學 出版社, 2012, 8 + 206 page LIU Zengguang Published online: 10 April 2013 # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at S FANG Xudong ’s new book, The Painting Comes After the Plain Groundwork: The Interpretations and Philosophical Studies of the Classics 繪事後素: 經典解釋與哲學研 究, emphasizes two aspects of Confucianism, the interpretation of the Confucian classics and their philosophical study, which is why he accordingly divided the book ’s content into two parts. However, the two parts cannot be seen as totally unrelated, because, especially for Chinese philosophy or Chinese thought, the phil- osophical study of the classics is often contained in the interpretation of the classics, or we can say the latter is the basis of the former. Fang gave this book an impressive title. As is well known, in the Analects 論語 Confucius said: “The painting comes after the plain groundwork” (Analects 3.8) while discussing the meaning of a poem in the Classic of Poetry (shijing 詩經) with Zixia 子夏, one of his brilliant disciples. The title summarizes the contents beautifully, given its two separate parts. In “Interpretation of Confucian Classics,” Fang mainly analyzes the ancient commentaries on the Confucian classics and then makes judgments of his own on the different interpretations from these commentaries. In “Philosophical Studies of the Confucian Classics,” his major work is handling philosophical problems contained in the ancient Confucian classics. Therefore, the relation between the two parts exactly corre- sponds to that of the painting (hui 繪) and the plain groundwork (su 素). Each part of the book has 6 articles. There is