In our previous attempts to "revisit" and then "resurrect" Confucius, we have noted that the text of the Talks ( Lunyu in Chinese) usually associated with him is currently being dismantled piece by piece, to the point where the unity, coherence and continuity of a text regarded by the entire Chinese tradition as foundational are being challenged, opening up a veritable "Confucius construction site" under the open sky. This work is akin to that of critical exegetes of biblical texts, particularly the Gospels. The critical re-reading of ancient sources, coupled with the appearance of handwritten versions unearthed from tombs and often diverging from the versions handed down, is forcing us to radically change the way we think about how a text like the Lunyu came to be and impose itself as a privileged reference on Master Kong's teaching.
What emerges from recent works representative of this new conception, which describes itself as "revisionist", is the general idea of a crystallization of the Lunyu text around the figure of Master Kong, not during his lifetime, nor even as a result of a transmission ensured by his disciples, but only from the establishment, or even consolidation, of the Han imperial dynasty (206 B.C.-A.DC. - 220 A.D.) in the firstcentury B.C., i.e. three to four centuries after the lifetime of the historical Confucius (conventional dates 551-479). Assuming, however, that the Lunyu is at best an earlier Han compilation, reflecting the political preoccupations of the new centralized imperial order, wouldn't we have to push logic to its logical limit, by putting forward the radical hypothesis that the figure of Master Kong could itself be a Han invention? In other words, wasn't his placement on a pedestal also called for by the specific needs of establishing new socio-political structures? According to the most radical "revisionist" scholars, the Lunyu could just as well have been compiled as an anthology of "selected sayings" drawn from the vast literature associated with the masters of antiquity and specifically attributed to (or placed in the mouth of) Master Kong at a time when his character was beginning to be statufied or sacralized, or even deified, under the Han, who understood that a new centralized order needed not only new modes of socio-political management and organization, but also a new order that we would describe today as ideological.