The Analects of Confucius Lesson Plan

Discuss what makes each Book in today’s reading distinct, and then compare these with Books from previous days’ reading. Why might it be useful to study the Analects in the order in which they have been compiled, as we are doing in this Lesson Plan, even with all of their repetitiveness and contradictoriness? What are the potential pitfalls in studying them this way?

Students might begin by attempting to provide a brief summary of each Book, or to note if they find this very difficult to do, and to define what about the Books makes it difficult (examples might include the verbatim replications of sayings across different Books, the lack of coherence in later Books, and...