The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

A popular book that grew out of Michael Puett's undergraduate course on classical Chinese ethical and political theory at Harvard, written with the journalist Christine Gross-Loh. Its argument is that Chinese thinkers of roughly 500 to 200 BCE challenge a modern Western assumption: that the good life comes from discovering a true, stable self and planning around it. Instead they treat the self as a messy bundle of habits that can be reshaped. Each chapter takes one thinker or text. Confucius shows how small rituals of courtesy, performed as if they were real, train us to respond better to others. Mencius stresses cultivating the moral sprouts we are born with. The Laozi teaches influence without force, the text known as Inward Training speaks of vitality and spirit, Zhuangzi celebrates spontaneity and transformation, and Xunzi argues that goodness is something people construct. Some scholars have criticised the book for presenting ancient texts as self-help and for smoothing over their differences.

It is a lively first introduction to classical Chinese philosophy that shows how its ideas about ritual, habit and self-cultivation can change everyday life.