---
product_id: 12667204
title: "Confucius: And the World He Created"
brand: "michael schuman"
price: "₩87331"
currency: KRW
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.kr/products/12667204-confucius-and-the-world-he-created
store_origin: KR
region: South Korea
---

# Confucius: And the World He Created

**Brand:** michael schuman
**Price:** ₩87331
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Confucius: And the World He Created by michael schuman
- **How much does it cost?** ₩87331 with free shipping
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## Description

Confucius: And the World He Created

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Perplexing, interesting, but Schumann has a trouble balancing the entire story
  

*by C***N on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 22, 2016*

Schuman assigns himself a difficult task, dissecting and sharing the extremely nebulous world of Confucianism in East Asia and the shape it has taken in China, Korea, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan.  Schumann’s writing for the Wall Street Journal and Time aid him in developing a breezy journalistic style, his marriage into a Korean family give him both an insider and outsider perspective, and his willingness to do the research is laudable.  Beyond that, Schumann doesn’t just start with the Analects, but really does try to get into the history of Confucius himself, the history of Qafu, and the strange flexibility of Confucian doctrine.Schumann gets into the difficulties of dealing with Confucius admittedly:  Confucius is a mythic figure and reformer already writing about a past that was mythic to Confucius himself. The layers of mystification are deep. Furthermore, Confucius and Confucianism comes off at first like a Sinological equal to a Hellenic philosophical school, and like Platonism, religious ideas accumulated in vaguely metaphysical notions prior.  It’s also important that early Confucianism was relevant on the study of classics existing prior to Confucius himself.This flexibility in Confucianism makes it hard to pin down and hard to talk about consistently.  Confucianism has both democratic and anti-Democratic tendencies, both humane and inhumane elements, but has always been dependent on Imperial patronage.  Schuman’s history is interesting and in-depth, showing the development of different elements of Confucianism changing in response to legalism, Daoism, Buddhism, and even Christianity.  Neo-Confucianism role in many patriarchal imperial cults becomes clear but so does its deviation from classical Confucianism.  Schuman even hints at, but doesn’t go into, the idea that elements of Confucianism as we understand it were promoted by European missionaries.Schuman’s writings on Confucianism in modern world, and its relationship to 20th century critics is more problematic. Schumann admires Confucius and East Asian culture, but as his last chapter reveals, is actually quite critical of the way it is being used by various governments in East Asia as a means of gas-lighting public order and painting more participatory ideas from democratic societies as Western, foreign, and corrupt. To combat this, however, Schumann often sounds like he is making excuses for Confucian excesses. In other words, Schumann knows his bias but out of respect for his topic, over corrects on the side of apologetics.I found this book informative, readable, but very frustrating as it almost certainly will make no one completely happy. It isn’t an explication of the Analects. It’s not just a historical discussion of the development of Confucianism, and it is both critical of and apologetic for East Asian society. Schumann has difficulty dealing with post-Deng embrace of Confucius after the excesses of the cultural revolution or the criticism of Singapore’s ruler, Yew, to actually have Confucianism take off in Singapore.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    The IDEA of Confucius
  

*by E***R on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 21, 2015*

As an American who knew little to nothing about Confucius and Chinese culture, I found this book to be a great introduction to these ideas and the history of the region.Schuman rolls 2500 years of history into a neat 242 pages. He starts by attempting to tell the story of the "REAL" Confucius, but soon leaves the sage in his grave and instead follows the story of the "IDEA" of Confucius. Each chapter has it's own big idea that he attempts to explain but the book also goes in chronological order as well so that the reader can follow the evolution of the Confucius idea and the history.I believe that Schuman sums up this book the best in Ch. 8 when he says:"What is interesting for our story is how Confucius has been perceived across time. His influence has been seen as so dominant, so much a part of daily life in East Asia, that he has received either the credit or blame for whatever was taking place at any given moment. Confucius the hard-charging capitalist was every bit as symbolic of the 1970s as Confucius the archaic feudalist was of the 1910s. Like a great method actor, the sage can take on whatever role he is hired to perform, depending on the script. So much makeup has been caked upon him that he has become barely recognizable."This book does a fine job of identifying the evolution of these ideas and it makes me think of my own western culture and how the ideas of capitalism and Christianity have been used by leaders to push development and industrialization as well as for their own personal gain.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Michael Schuman has written an excellent book on Confucious
  

*by E***M on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 1, 2015*

Michael Schuman has written an excellent book on Confucious. I not only learned about him and how his works have been used and abused historically, but I also learned a lot of Chinese history. The historical knowledge alone makes this book well worth reading. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get a good basic understanding of Confucious and how his writings have influenced China and the world through the ages.

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*Product available on Desertcart South Korea*
*Store origin: KR*
*Last updated: 2026-03-08*