| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Lionel M. Jensen. Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1997. Pp. xv, 444. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.

This book aims to challenge current views of Confucianism, calling into question its conceptual coherence as it is used in the West. Lionel M. Jensen is troubled by the various contemporary uses made of "Confucius" and "Confucianism" by academicians and politicians: those who explain the success of East Asian economic expansion in the 1980s and 1990s, and others who seek to interpret "Confucianism" and "neo-Confucianism" in terms of spiritual and philosophical significance compatible with those of the West. He criticizes their interpretive ads as products of the "desire of the interpreter" (p. 17). For Jensen, they are all fabrications in the history of what he calls "the manufacturing of Confucianism." 1

Part one of the book focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Jesuits, especially Matteo Ricci, attempted to turn Kongzi into Confucius and his teachings into Confucianism, a monotheistic religion and a metonym of "real" Chineseness. The meaning of these discursive symbols, however, are not what the ancient Chinese knew as Kongzi and his teachings. By situating the experience of the Jesuits in a translingual, transcultural, and global context, Jensen does an excellent job in highlighting the hybrid nature of the Jesuits in China. He argues convincingly that the first generation of Jesuits in China were trying to become Chinese. It is the concept of "Jesuit Chineseness" that distinguishes Jensen's analysis from previous studies of the Jesuits (p. 80). But Jensen is mistaken to claim that "Confucius" was not a phonetic transcription of a Chinese term Kong fuzi (Master Kong). In fact, a late Ming play did use Kong fuzi to refer to Kongzi (Xin bian Kong fuzi zhouyou lieguo dacheng qilin ji). . . .

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