The Analects of Confucius is another "sage" foundational religious book from the ancient past in a similair vein as The Upanishads and the Pali Canon.  Many texts came out around the same time in different parts of the world beginning around the 5th century BCE and finishing, I'd argue a little over a 1000 years later with the Koran (or Quran).  I exclude some the ancient Greek texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey which likely originated in the 8th century BCE, but we can certainly include Plato's dialogues and Aristotle's work if we want - they did, after all, seed the western world with a specific philosophical outlook on reality.  At some point, we're splitting hairs between early religion and philosophy, anyway. 

With the rise of civilizations around the globe independently, more complex language and writing were the inevitable fruits.  Order was the in the air, and after a along stint as homo sabien savages running across fields of ice in search of pleistocene megafauna, it was time for man to write the morality check.  With a settling of climate distruptions, societies expanded and began to look inward.  Time streched-out with agriculture as the reliance on day-to-day or week-to-week hunting and gathering no longer required the main collective focus.  

With order and expansion of time came introspection and comtemplation.   Some were more gifted than others at utilizing this new-found time to formalize the patterns of collective experience.  Confucius was one of these gifted men of his time.  From introspection, he taught his followers many valuable lessons such as:  1.  The 5 practices 2. The power of names 3. The importance of laws and social structure 4. The fundamental power of language.  

It's important to keep in mind the power these early influencers had on the people of their time.  Before any formalizatoin of morality or social structure, it was more akin to a survivalists intuition, or when times became bad because of crop loss or climate disruptions, total chaos and breakdown of social cohesion.   These early sages seeded the kernels of the cultures to follow and their lasting authority is codified today in modern laws, whether in the United States, India, China, or another country of the world.

Summary:  Hugely influential early philsophical text on eastern Asian law and morality with commentary on the nature of reality - some passages obvious to us today, and others, quite profound.  
​
Rating:  4.5
​
-E.B.
2024-08-08