Confucius--The Secular as Sacred

I very much enjoyed the originality of this book. I don't agree with the author's major premise regarding the interpretation of one of the analects, but I found the originality refreshing. This should not be your first book on Confucius. But once you are comfortable in having some understanding of his teachings, at least enough understanding to recognize when Fingarette departs from orthodox interpretations, then you will greatly enjoy this book. I think it is a "must read" for serious students! If you are interested in a practical view of Confucianism, I recommend the book by Robert Canright: "Achieve Lasting Happiness, Timeless Secrets to Transform Your Life."

This book is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Confucius, Confucianism, or early Chinese thought in general. It is quite convincing on some points, but also very problematic on others.Fingarette was a mainstream Western philosopher, who said that when he first read Confucius, he found him to be a "prosaic and parochial moralizer." However, he eventually became convinced that Confucius had "an imaginative vision of man equal in its grandeur" to any that he knew.Fingarette is at his best explaining the importance of ritual in Confucianism. Most of us nowadays think of rituals as useless affectations. However, Fingarette shows that Confucius regarded rituals (from handshaking to funerals) as an important part of being human. It is when we participate in such ritual activities that we are most distinctively human. In addition, ritual has the power to enable humans to work together without the need for coercion. Perhaps if we in the West can recover the feeling for the importance of shared, sacred rituals, we can help give more unity to our chaotic society.Fingarette was also deeply influenced by Western behaviorism, and this leads to some of the less plausible aspects of his book. He wishes to deny that there is any "internal" dimension to Confucius' thought. If what Fingarette wishes to claim is that Confucius did not think of human psychology the way that, say, Augustine or Descartes did, then he is quite correct. (But then who is Fingarette arguing with? No serious interpreter I know of has read Confucius as a Cartesian.) However, Fingarette sometimes seems to want to claim that emotions and attitudes are, for Confucius, perfectly public states. I think that this is to project Western behaviorism onto Confucius (and behaviorism itself derives what limited plausibility it has from being a reaction to more extreme forms of Cartesianism).Warts and all, this is still a classic book on Confucius after almost twenty years. If you want to learn more about Confucius, H.G. Creel's _Confucius and the Chinese Way_ is worth reading. For broader surveys of Confucianism, you might read Philip J. Ivanhoe's _Confucian Moral Self Cultivation_, or the anthology he and I co-edited, _Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy_.

As an undergraduate and graduate student I have read this book a total of at least five times. Each time, I am impressed by how clearly Fingarette clarifies the important fundamentals of Confucianism that we often forget in our attempt to exoticize this central Chinese philosopher. A short, easy to read book, it ranks with Waley's "Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China" as one of the first important texts to read to understand Chinese philosophy.