Rating: 
Summary: Good Anthology
Review: A bargain anthology that includes extended selections from well-known and lesser-known Chinese works, with brief historical introductions and notes. There is a companion volume covering Indian literature.
Rating:
Summary: Good Anthology
Review: A bargain anthology that includes extended selections from well-known and lesser-known Chinese works, with brief historical introductions and notes. There is a companion volume covering Indian literature.
Rating:
Summary: Source Book in Chinese Philosophy
Review: Dr. Chan was my college Asian philosophy professor so I used the book under special circumstances. As I recall, it was to be a beginning for those interested in the subject and was not intended to satisfy those further along in their studies. He was always receptive to differing views, and I think, would have been pleased to argue his points. He might be called conservative, but it was not easy for intellectuals still stuck in Mao's China as he was as a young man. He told us of having to read in the toilet so no one would know. The book is very simply written, easy for a novice to grasp and structured in such a way as to encourage discussion about the various philosophers. I recommend it for those with a budding interest in the subject. It gives a good overview and would encourage most readers to go on. No book should be read without the possibility of questioning what it contains just as no teacher should ever be regarded as the ultimate authority.
Rating:
Summary: Source Book in Chinese Philosophy
Review: Dr. Chan was my college Asian philosophy professor so I used the book under special circumstances. As I recall, it was to be a beginning for those interested in the subject and was not intended to satisfy those further along in their studies. He was always receptive to differing views, and I think, would have been pleased to argue his points. He might be called conservative, but it was not easy for intellectuals still stuck in Mao's China as he was as a young man. He told us of having to read in the toilet so no one would know. The book is very simply written, easy for a novice to grasp and structured in such a way as to encourage discussion about the various philosophers. I recommend it for those with a budding interest in the subject. It gives a good overview and would encourage most readers to go on. No book should be read without the possibility of questioning what it contains just as no teacher should ever be regarded as the ultimate authority.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent way to get acquainted with Chinese philosophy
Review: I agree with the other reviewers that this book is somewhat dated. However, it still ranks as one of the most accessable books in print about Chinese philosophy. Chan is an expert at culling the essential material from the various sources and distilling them into coherent chunks. However, Chan is notorious for leaning too heavily on the Confucian side of Chinese tradition.My professor, Wm. Theodore de Bary, arguably Chan's successor, occasionally raises points in class regarding problems with Chan's work. In Wm. de Bary's point of view, the problems are not serious but they are worth addressing in a revision. For example, Chan uses the phrase "Doctrine of the Mean" following an earlier translation while a more accurate translation would be simply "The Mean". Chan has similar problems with English-language usage, but these only occur in exceptional instances. More often he gets bogged down in terminology that was commonly in use during his period but now seems dated. Another matter to bring up, although not necessarily a problem, is Chan's personal faith in Christianity, which may have influenced his choice of word usage and selection of materials. Objections aside, this is a wonderful book that anyone with more than a passing interest in Chinese philosophy will find useful. After reading this book, one might want to move on to Prof. de Bary's newly-revised "Sources of Chinese Tradition", and then on to more specialized works.
Rating:
Summary: Chan walks you through the a labyrinthine mindset.
Review: I have to admit to one thing; this book is not for the timid. It took me a long time to read and the myriad of names and dates did confuse me. This massive work of over 800 pages (it is a bit of a misnomer as the book is about 780 pages of text and notes - the rest is appendix, bibliography and index) is really an almost exegetical read of Chinese philosophy. Wing-Tsit Chan obviously took great care to plan out this book. The main advantage of this book is that it makes a whole range of primary sources accessible to the English speaking reader. As best as these books can get, it tries to cover the whole gamut of Chinese philosophy from pre-Confucian all the way through to Maoist China. If there is one thing that stands out is that Chinese philosophy is just as (and I hate to juxtapose - but I will this one time) convoluted and affected by forces as (or even more than our very own "western" tradition) acting on it. If you take the analysis from Confucian to Neo-Confucian (and even beyond), this development takes a tour de force through a variety of schools inclusive of (but not excluding others) of Taoism, Buddhism, modern neo-Rationalist and neo-Idealist movements. The book is full of valuable "digressions" (if you can call it that) of details concerning the various players that are involved in the process of change. As if almost being the de facto standard, he starts with Confucianism and presents important extracts. Certainly, we have to be a little critical of what he opts out by what he opts in - but that is the work of specialists. Chan writes from and about the Analects and follows is metamorphosis through Mencius, Hsun Tzu, and Tung Chung-Shu. Later, he deftly shows how different (significantly different) Confucianism is from Neo-Confucianism. Also important is Chan's treatment of the Tao-Te Ching and its impact on the modern epistemological and metaphysical traditions. For those who have studied humanistic Chinese traditions will form an opinion of the Chinese as hard-core pragmatists with no sense of aesthetics or metaphysics. This book will, as it did me, pleasantly change all that. Despite the strict adherence to age old traditions, influences most Buddhist - clearly show a bent toward the metaphysical. I have to admit that I would on the occasion get caught up in the almost obsessive references to things like the turbidity of water and how it is correct or not to use it as a metaphor for some essential things like man's nature. Last but not least, are how interestingly Chan talks about the traditions in the west - especially Kant, Bergson and Nietzsche. Oddly enough, for those of you who were paying attention, the digression at the end about the signs and symbols sounded suspiciously like Claude Levi-Strauss. For the novices out there, I highly recommend this book as a starter but certainly one cannot neglect the complete The Analects, Doctrine of the Mean, The Great Learning, The Classic of Filial Piety and the works of Mencius to get some sense of modern day sino-based traditions. Despite having been written in 1969, the book is as timeless as ever and one of my personal favorites. Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: A few reservations.....
Review: I use this book in teaching, and am very grateful for it. However, there are a few "gotchas" that the reader/student should be aware of. First, it's old. It was done in 1963 and won't be revised, since the author is dead. It thus has a very "traditionalistic" selection of texts, with philosophy more narrowly defined than I feel comfortable with. And of course, it doesn't include any of the textual discoveries since 1963, or any of the groundbreaking textual work, such as Graham's on the Chuang-tzu. There are major authenticity problems with some of the selections from the Kung-sun Lung-tzu and Tung Chung-shu as well. Second, even for its time, it's conservative. The author was, to put it kindly, credulous about some early datings. The discussion of the Lao-tzu is particularly problematic. There is also an overly dismissive attitude towards the thought of some periods, such as the Han. Third, it's somewhat biased, though in a very traditional way. The Neo-Confucian standpoint is more or less assumed true throughout. This detracts from the discussion of some documents earlier than the Neo-Confucians. None of this is an argument not to use the book. But be just a bit careful if you do.
Rating:
Summary: The best source of Chinese thought from Confucius to today
Review: In this book, Wing-Tsit Chan examines the entire Chinese
philosophical tradition, from ancient times to the rise of
Communism, with a special section on Mao-Tse Tung's inspirational
thought in modern China. All emphasis is laid on Chinese thought in particular, and the differences and similarites between schools
of Eastern and Western thought. For anyone interested in the Chinese mind,
this is the definitive book in its field.
Rating:
Summary: An encyclopedia of Chinese thought.
Review: This is one of the finest works faithful to the humanist spirit of Chinese philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent way to get acquainted with Chinese philosophy
Review: We owe a great debt to the late Professor Chan for having translated this anthology of selections from over 2,500 years of Chinese philosophy. To my knowledge, this is the only anthology that gives so many selections from so many different periods in Chinese history. Perhaps there never will be a book like this again, at least by one scholar, because I doubt anyone else is competent to translate so many texts from so many different periods. That being said, this book also has serious limitations. Arbuckle's review (which is nearby) expertly identifies many of them. Here are some more. Chan's English is much better than my modern Chinese, but he still sometimes lapses into incoherence. With a few exceptions, his comments on the translations are both confusing and confused. Chan likes to use Western philosophical terminology, but he is not in command of it. It is neither accurate nor helpful to describe the Ch'eng-Chu wing of Neo-Confucianism as "rationalistic," and the Lu-Wang wing as "dynamic idealism." For many of the philosophers that Chan covers, this is still the best source for translations. This is especially so of later Chinese philosophy. I know of no better translation of selections from Ch'eng Yi and Ch'eng Hao, for example. But for many other philosophers, you would be better off with translations with a more narrow focus. Daniel Gardner's _Learning to Be a Sage_ is a great source on Chu Hsi. And I would (not surprisingly) recommend the anthology I co-edited for translations from ancient Chinese philosophers. (D.C. Lau, Victor Mair, and Burton Watson have also produced more extensive translations of major early Chinese philosophers. Look up their names here on amazon.com.)
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