Translating Concepts: Contemporary Encounters with Confucius

The scientific interpretation of Confucianism today formats its character before entering and translating it. Confucius’s concepts were thus either rendered into Western terms in the manner of modern science close to fact-depicting, or became vessels containing demonstratively established beliefs and abstracted, lifeless meaning and sense. The problem is that not only does Confucius become the “straw man” for Western cultures, but the humanity told by Confucius slips away before English terms rooted in European experience. For this reason, something other than science is needed if Confucius’s thought is to hold on its own terms. A phenomenological model of Confucian understanding for translators is involved here: Through delineating the deeper workings of Confucius’s concepts right back from forgotten experience, does a humane opening of the self to the presence of Confucius come into light.