Ogyu Sorai's philosophical masterworks

by Sorai Ogyū

"This volume, a monumental work of scholarship, offers for the first time in any Western language unabridged and fully annotated translations of Sorai's masterpieces. The Bendo (Distinguishing the Way) and Benmei (Distinguishing Names) are works of political philosophy that define the theoretical foundation for a leadership exercising total power, the best remedy, in Sorai's view, for a regime in crisis. The translations are based on the 1740 (Genbun 5) woodblock edition, the first major edition of these seminal texts published during the Tokugawa period.". "In his commentary, John Tucker's situates the Bendo and Benmei in relation to Neo-Confucianism via what is known as "philosophical texicography." This genre, which links Sorai's thinking with Neo-Confucianism, is traced to the early-thirteenth-century Song dynasty text the Xingli ziyi (The Meanings of Neo-Confucian Terms) by Chen Beixi (1159-1223). Although Sorai was an unrelenting critic of the Neo-Confucian formulations of the gr