Philosophical Universe of the Mengzi (Books Review: Mengzi: In a New Russian Translation with Classic Commentaries by Zhao Qi and Early Confucian Prose: Analects, Mengzi)

Abstract

A new Russian translation of Chinese treatise Mengzi from the Confucian philosophical corpus Si shu (Four Books) was long-awaited by sinologists. The author of the book is the famous Russian sinologist I.I. Semenenko, who has already published a series of works on the spiritual culture of China. The book contains a translation of the original text Mengzi, translations of two canonical commentaries by Zhao Qi and Zhu Xi as well as two historical and philosophical essays by I.I. Semenenko on Mengzi and Chinese exegesis. The publication is equipped with bibliography, chronology of Mengzi hermeneutic tradition, indexes of names and terms. The author professionally combines historical and philosophical analytics with knowledge from related disciplines – mythology, philology, history. As a translator, I.I. Semenenko is deeply immersed in the semantics of the text, at the same time, the book’s author pays considerable attention to the extensive commentaries. It is worthy of mention, until the beginning of the 20^th century, the traditional Chinese philosophy developed precisely in the form of commentaries on classical works. Until recently, both in China itself and in foreign sinology, researchers were almost exclusively focused on canonical texts. Only in the second half of the 1980s a new research field emerges – the study of the commentaries on canonical texts, the study of Chinese exegetical tradition. Thus, I.I. Semenenko is one of the few researchers who choose commentaries as the object of his historical and philosophical study.