The Translated Analects and the Contemporary American Political Philosophy

Viewed holistically, the two English versions of the Analects of Confucius in the U.S.published in 1998 are dialogues with the research circles in contemporary political philosophy.Through translation of the Analects of Confucius, the translators elucidate communitarian views and use them as a tool against neo-liberalism of the western political philosophy in the past three decades.It reveals that the academic circles are trying to find new dynamism for the debate and development of ideas from the Confucian ideology and culture in addition to the western classical philosophy.This paper investigates the three approaches taken by the translators to interpret communitarianism, and the ensuing argumentation for communitarianism in the political philosophy research based on the translated Analects in question, and demonstrates that the translated Confucian discourse has found access to the western political philosophy discourse power system and exerted influence on the Western liberalist ideology, indicating that translation of Confucian classics has to be geared to the present social and cultural context and requirement in the West to secure discourse power and effective channels for transmission.