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This article compares the transreading of Chinese texts in German by Sinologist Richard Wilhelm and novelist Alfred Döblin. Wilhelm, a spiritual intermediary between China and Europe, worked with eminent Chinese scholars to write accessible translations for German readers of Confucian and Daoist classics. Döblin relied on Wilhelm’s translation of the Liezi for his artistic breakthrough, The Three Leaps of Wang-lun: Chinese Novel. Over two decades later, while exiled in France, he crafted an idiosyncratic presentation of Confucius. Although he used excerpts from James Legge’s English translation, Döblin’s perspective on Confucius is grounded in his exposure to Chinese texts in Wilhelm’s German translation. Both Wilhelm and Döblin reinterpreted Chinese philosophy to provide lessons for 20th-century Western readers. Our analysis recognizes the social environment that shaped both writers’ interest in Chinese philosophy. We examine selected passages from these two representatives of the German literary tradition in order to indicate their convergent positions on Sino-Western cultural contact. Their shared stances toward the Chinese tradition, their own marginal positioning, physical migration, and intellectual alienation culminated in a unifying, outsider’s view. Both Wilhelm and Döblin initiated and promoted significant interactions on a basis of equality between Chinese and Western cultures.

We are living in an era in which the world is being turned into an object to be exploited and nature into a storehouse. From environmental pollution and deforestation to toxic waste and the depletion of resources, the Earth is in trouble and we need to act. To address this environmental crisis, I propose to recover early Confucian philosophy because it can be used to develop a more desirable way of interacting with the environment. Confucian philosophy conceives a kind of humanism that promotes a harmonious relationship between people and nature. Thus, this article attempts to describe a distinctive attitude towards nature and the role of humans that we can find in early Confucianism as a way of rethinking our current ecological concerns.

In the Analects, Confucius recommends to not disclose one’s father stealing a sheep, claiming that zhi 直lies within it. This passage has become the focus of a heated and prolonged debate among Chinese scholars in the last decade. A proper understanding of zhi, which is central to understanding this whole passage, is to straighten the crooked, or uprighten the non-upright. So what Confucius means is that the upright son ought to make his non-upright father upright; the best way to do so is to remonstrate his father against his wrongdoing, and the best environment for the successful remonstration can be provided by non-disclosure of his father’s wrongdoing.