The Meaning of Terms in the Analects and Mencius (Gomō jigi)

A philosophical lexicon by the Kyoto Confucian teacher Itō Jinsai, drafted around 1683 and published after his death in 1705. It defines the key terms of the Analects and the Mencius, among them the Way of Heaven, the Mandate of Heaven, the Way, principle, virtue, humaneness, righteousness, human nature and the heart. Jinsai's aim is to recover what Confucius and Mencius meant before Song Neo-Confucianism, which he thinks overlaid their words with Buddhist and Daoist metaphysics. He argues that the world is a single, living process of vital energy (ki) in constant generation, and that principle (ri) is only the pattern within things, not a prior reality. The Way is found in ordinary human relationships, and humaneness is love. Following Mencius, he holds that human nature has good beginnings that must be extended through effort, rejecting Zhu Xi's split between an original nature and a physical one. His approach became known as kogigaku, the study of ancient meanings.

It is a model of philosophy by definition, showing how a careful reading of a few words can overturn an orthodoxy, and it offers a this-worldly ethics built on everyday relationships.