Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed by Yong Huang (review)

Yong Huang’s Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed is an introduction, primarily addressed to Western students, to the thought of Confucius. His book does not aim at providing an overview of Confucius’s thought, but instead focuses on four interrelated topics to show Confucius’s contemporary relevance. At this, Huang succeeds admirably, providing thoughtful accounts that draw from both Chinese scholarship on Confucius and Western philosophy on the topic at hand. And while he concentrates on four specific topics, he nonetheless manages to convey much of the breadth of Confucius’s teachings.

But before he gets to those topics, he first relates Confucius’s life. His is a traditional account, drawn from sources such as Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian and the Zuozhuan in addition to the Analects. It focuses on what Confucius did and not on the broader context of the times. That lacuna is understandable since Huang is taking Confucius as someone whose teachings still have much to offer us here and now. He is after a philosophical, not a historical, understanding of Confucius and consequently is largely unconcerned with how Confucius’s thought was a response to his particular time and place. So one learns of how Confucius traveled from state to state in search of office and knowledge— negotiating a treaty between Lu and Qi, studying under Laozi, how he was in difficulty at Chen, and of his relationships with Yan Hui and other disciples. Huang also describes how Confucius edited the Book of Poetry, the Book of Documents, and the Book of Change; inspired the Book of Rites; and largely wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals. At times, one feels that Huang decided to print the legend, a tendency he retains throughout the book. Later he writes that “in addition to literary knowledge, Confucius also knows martial arts; he can run fast enough to catch a rabbit; and he can fish, hunt, raise cows and horses, do accounting, and run funerals” (p. 102). One begins to wonder if there is anything Confucius couldn’t, or didn’t, do. But even if one disagrees with his approach here, it is the account generations of Chinese have heard and is therefore important to know. Furthermore, disentangling the authentic Confucius from the legendary Confucius is hardly uncontroversial and could simply confuse readers. In any case, this biography does not play a significant role in the remaining chapters. Accordingly, one can freely skip it and get into the meat of the book: the chapters on morality, virtue, moral education, and filial piety.

These chapters, while interrelatedly building from and referring back to one another, can be read separately. This makes them ideal for an introductory course: one can assign a single chapter. Huang begins each with a clear introduction of the argument to follow, and then in approximately five sections (including a conclusion) makes good on his promise, backing his arguments with quotes from the Analects and other sources while regularly referring to alternate interpretations. He ably achieves his dual purpose of explaining Confucius and making Confucius’s positions convincing.

Huang begins with “Morality: Why You Should Not Turn the Other Cheek.” As he does in most sections, he takes an important passage from the Analects and fleshes it out. In this case, the passage is Analects 14.34, “You repay an injury with uprightness, but you repay a good turn with a good turn” (p. 37). Naturally, this leads to comparing Confucian morality primarily to Christian morality since Confucius argues against turning the other cheek. To do so, Huang explains Confucius’s version of the Golden Rule, which raises a theme central to Confucius and the rest of the book: transforming others. According to Huang one should not turn the other cheek because more often than not, it will only encourage the person’s bad behavior. And since committing injustice causes internal harm, if one truly treated others as one wished to be treated...