The adventure begun three years ago has consisted in revisiting (or rather, in the multiplicity of revisits) Confucius and the text of the Entretiens associated with him, with the constant concern to " hold both ends ", i.e. to show more or less ancient processes of composition and interpretation of the texts, without ever forgetting to place them in the light of contemporary issues.
Our point of departure was precisely the contemporary situation, still in progress, of the " return of Confucius " in mainland China, a massive phenomenon affecting many sectors and strata of Chinese society, and all the more spectacular in that it is exactly the opposite of what we observed just a generation ago, in the 1970s, when a determination to massively destroy the entire traditional and, by extension, Confucian heritage prevailed. This " return of Confucius " is accompanied by a sudden revival of interest in the Lunyu (the title most often translated into French as Entretiens), which is now a bestseller in Chinese bookshops, almost to the point of forgetting the bitterness with which it was vilified and burned during the Cultural Revolution, and more particularly during the 1974 campaign of " critique contre Lin Biao et Confucius ".