Yoav Ariel Knihy

The book delves into the authenticity of K'ung-ts'ung-tzu, suggesting it may be a forgery by Wang Su rather than a genuine work of a Confucian descendant. It reevaluates the Confucian school during the period between Confucius's death and the rise of Neo-Confucianism, highlighting philosophical debates with other schools like Legalism and Mohism. Ariel argues that this text reveals a complex philosophical landscape, portraying Confucianism as both metaphysical and assertive in promoting its values during the third century.

At the end of the millennium, the dominant philosophical mood is relativistic. Ideals, opinions, and values are rarely judged in absolute or universal terms. Instead, subjective views are juxtaposed and assessed in relation to one another and none is accepted finally in and for itself but characterized in relation to its whole environment.In this collection of essays, philosophers of widely divergent views and emphases try to assess the tension between relativism and absolutism in the general domains of philosophy and religion. In the closing section of the book, an extensive article tries to integrate the responses to the whole problem and advance beyond the simple anithesis of the relative and the absolute.