Li Chi

Li Chi: Book of Rites, translated by James Legge, 949 pages (2 vols)

The Li Chi (pinyin Liji) is a collection of Confucian texts compiled in the Han dynasty dealing with matters of classical Chinese ceremonial.  Much of it concerns the minutiae of proper observance, including difficult questions when unusual circumstances impose conflicting obligations.  Other texts consider the nature and value of ceremony against those who would reject it as mere outward show, maintaining that ritual is essential to the proper ordering of emotion, evoking the proper feelings in those who lack them and restraining the passions of those who cannot control themselves.

The Li Chi is one of the "Five Classics" of Confucian philosophy.  As such, it has been studied, interpreted, glossed, and debated by legions of scholars for thousands of years.  Legge attempts to condense some of this conversation into the footnotes, along with notes on difficult translations and the claims of textual critics, and he succeeds in doing so without burying the text in the commentary.  Most readers will find it to be primarily of antiquarian interest, which is hardly surprising given that the motives of the authors and compilers was itself antiquarian, a search into the past, not due to idle curiosity or academic ambition, but out of a love of wisdom and a deep need for models to be imitated.