Kung-chuan Hsiao

This is probably the most comprehensive study of ancient chinese political thought available at present. It was written in the 1940s and translated to English in the 1970s. It is divided in two parts: The schools of political thought prior to imperial unification (confucianism, mohism, legalism, taoism) and Political thought in the early authoritarian empire. Part one is quite similar to Waley's and Schwartz's overviews of ancient chinese thought, although a bit more detailed. Part two sets this book apart from the western works in my library as it discusses a great number of political authors whom I had never heard of. Many of these later authors seem to have been overly concerned with astrology and omens, but there's also an interesting tradition of anarchistic thought in this later period. However, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of general analysis in this book, especially in part two. The author discusses a multitude of works in detail and occasionally mentions their connections to historical events, but never really summarizes the key aspects of different traditions. So even though this is a well-written, well-translated and comprehensive book, it unfortunately lacks a chapter of general synthesis which would have yielded the most interesting insights. The one thing I did learn from this book was that early Chinese political thought had great variety.… (mehr)