Talk:The Ancient World (HUM 124 - UNC Asheville)/Texts/Analects

Class project description (10/15/20)
Quick glance at due dates: Three stages: 10/18, 10/25, and 11/1. The bulk of the work will be done by 10/25.

The goal of this project is to create pages for 14 important concepts from the Analects, and to include comparative discussion with other texts. There are two parts to the project.

Part one
Everybody will pick one concept and will spend 1-2 weeks writing draft versions of a page about that concept on their personal wiki page. Pick one that is of interest to you, or do some reading in Analects before picking one. Sign up for the concept on the Google sheet linked on Moodle.

At a later date, we will find the best way to put our heads together and create collaborative pages for each concept that draw on all of the writing that you all did on an individual basis.

How to get started: have a look at the discussion of the different words in the “Note on the Translation of Key Terms” in the introduction to your edition of the Analects (the one published by Oxford assigned for this class), and decide which one interests you. Then, look up your term in the index at the back of the book for where to find it in the Analects. Read the relevant analects for the term (the Analects is not super organized; you do not need to read it in order). For example, if you look under “Ritual” on p.108, you’ll see the first text reference as “1.12-13”: this means that ritual is a topic of Book 1, analects 12 and 13 (see p.4). The references in roman numerals are to pages in the book’s introduction. Start reading and thinking, and writing!

Here are some important aspects of the concept you should try to consider and write about:


 * A definition of the term in the form of a discussion over 1-3 paragraphs
 * Unexplained or ambiguous aspects; general questions that we are left with
 * Frequent use of quotations from the Analects, as much as possible
 * Discussion about how this idea is relevant, or not relevant, to our modern worldview
 * Explicit discussion of what Confucius’s worldview is, and how it might be characteristic of the ancient worldview in general

Here are the concepts:


 * Master
 * Sage
 * Gentleman - Daniel Wascoe
 * Small man
 * Humaneness
 * Virtue
 * Filial piety
 * Good faith
 * Understanding
 * Study/learning
 * The Way
 * Culture
 * Ritual
 * Heaven

Due date: You will begin writing this week and must have some basic ideas down by 10/18. I will respond to your ideas and give you feedback. Your draft on your personal wiki page must be done by 10/25.

Part two
I want you to include in your draft four references to other texts we are reading in the next few weeks. These are: the Teaching of Amenemope, Epictetus’s Handbook, Plato’s Euthyphro, and Plato’s Apology. As you read, think about your concept and look for passages in these texts that you can compare to what you are writing about Confucius. These references can be written in a separate section, or (better) can be integrated into what you are saying about Confucius.

To receive credit for these four references, you must 1. Point to a specific passage in the text you are comparing and quote it, and 2. Write at least three sentences for each reference.

You need to have two references written by 10/25, and two more written by 11/1.

-Joey Cross (discuss • contribs) 12:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)