New Interpretation of Chinese Classics for Modern Significance

The book series New Interpretations of Chinese Classics, which were written by Professor Peng Fuchun from the School of Philosophy , have been successively published by People’s Publishing House in 2015. Three monographs, namely, On Chinese Classics, On Taoism, On Confucianism, confront bravely the status quo of modern researches of Chinese Classics and dig deeply into contemporary ideological significance within the traditional Chinese texts.

On Chinese Classics, as the first work on the national spirit in China , faithfully analyzes the nature and historical morphosis (namely, Confucianism, Taoism, Zen) of Sinology and redefines its ideological meaning. In his view, Sinology is the study on national spirit while national spirit refers to Chinese wisdom. Therefore, the real Sinology is the study on Chinese wisdom. This kind of wisdom bears an attribute of naturalness, which is distinct from the Western non-naturalness. On Taosim tries hard to make a creative interpretation of Tao Te Ching and reshape the whole ideological structure. Meanwhile, it attempts to conduct a dialogue with Lao Zi in order to make his ancient thinking reborn in contemporary time. On the basis of the current translation, this book has drawn some inspiration from the authoritative German and English versions to compensate for Chinese version’s shortfall in grammar and logic, which makes the interpretation more complete, clear and precise. While retaining the features of the previous edition, On Confucianism collects several extra typical works in the academic history for comparison in a bid to display the intrinsic ideological structure of The Analects and injects refreshment in Confucianism.

At present, Peng Fuchun is writing On Hui Neng, the fourth book of this series. ( School of Philosophy Zhuang Yan)