Gu Yanwu is a towering figure in modern Chinese thought, and the political ideas and research methods in his Record of Daily Knowledge inspired the major intellectual movements of the Qing Dynasty. Ian Johnston makes Gu's notoriously difficult writings accessible to English-language readers for the first time. Meticulously translated, Johnston's Gu is a gift to China studies and to the ... Read morecomparative history of political thought.
John Delury, Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies (Seoul) Gu Yanwu's Record of Daily Knowledge consists of more than a thousand notes and essays he wrote after the collapse of Ming China in the seventeenth-century. For those who have the impression that Confucian political philosophy is essentially applied virtue ethics, focusing on the cultivation of personal virtues of literati-officials, Gu offers a refreshing alternative vision of Confucianism as the art of statecraft, emphasizing the need for institutional reform, the balance of power, and the importance of a humane economy. Gu's hope for an ideal society, in which people are free from the domination of arbitrary political and economic power, still speaks to us today. In this sense, Ian Johnston's lucid and compelling translation is a timely gift.
Yang Xiao, Kenyon College Show Less