New Discourses

When Liu Bang, the rough founder of the Han dynasty, sneered that he had won the empire on horseback and had no need of books, his adviser Lu Jia answered: you won it on horseback, but can you rule it on horseback? The emperor asked him to explain why Qin had fallen and how states rise, and Lu Jia wrote these twelve short essays, reading each to the court to applause. New Discourses argues for humane government, moral cultivation and the employment of worthy men, against the harsh legalism that destroyed Qin. This complete new English translation gives all twelve chapters, a foundational text of Han Confucian statecraft. Names are given in modern pinyin and key terms are rendered plainly rather than buried in jargon, so the arguments, stories and debates can be read straight through by anyone curious about Chinese thought.