Introduction

Confucius for Executives:

A Practical Rendering of The Analects

Translation and notes by J.D. Frodsham

Introduction

The Leader said: “Mindful of my own shortcomings, I have always attributed them to some other person”. (The New Analects)

Poststructuralism has taught that the meaning of any text depends on context and, since context is infinite, a text has an infinite number of meanings. ‘Reader Response’ theory taught us that the meaning of a text resides not in the text but in its readers, who are free to attribute to a text any meaning that they find compelling. The fact that this doctrine is not generally accepted, being repugnant to both common-sense and the law, among other things, has not prevented its finding high favour, even in our most prestigious universities. Quos deus vult perdere…

Being an academic myself, I therefore feel authorised to present this new translation of the Lun Yu (The Analects of Confucius), a patriarchal, reactionary text I first learned to read in Classical Chinese when a student in the Cambridge Faculty of Oriental Studies, over fifty years ago, under the guidance of old-fashioned scholars who naively believed that it was possible to ascribe a true meaning to a text. They had not yet – poor, misguided souls – encountered Deconstruction. Nor did they know, not having read Borges or Pierre Menard, that the only adequate way of translating The Analects would be to render it into the original Classical Chinese, without deviating in the slightest from the accepted text.

The context of this translation is the postmodern world and its morality. Si monumentum requieris, circumspice. The meaning that now emerges from this text is clearly one that the age demands and fully countenances. We get the philosophy we deserve and deserve the philosophy we do not get. Science has aided and abetted our confusion. The now authoritative Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics tells us that the wave packet does not collapse. Instead, all possibilities are realised and trillions of new universes are being formed every nano-second. Somewhere, therefore, there is a Lun Yu like this one and a Confucius who said exactly what he says in this text. Who could ask for more? Not even Pierre Menard.

I dedicate The New Analects to al my obscurantist Nietzschean and Derridean colleagues who teach their students that all texts and their translations are equal, being equally meaningless in a meaningless Multiverse, where nothing is certain except bodies, sex and Power. Since we appear to be rapidly heading towards a new computerised Fascism, this translation should prove useful for future Leaders, sardonic Übergruppenführeren wearing Death’s Head insignia, who will soon deconstruct us and our illusory values, even as Baudrillard and his fellow nihilists are telling us that nothing is really happening in our prison house of language. As one of Franco’s generals presciently cried: “Viva le muerte!” The coming decades look set to fulfil his wish.

[Chapter One, next week…]

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM