Observations autour et partir de Confucianisme et taosme : - Actualits wbriennes : - perspectives d'analyse et principes de traduction [Observations regarding and based on Confucianisme et taosme]

First the author points out the importance of the Introduction to L'thique conomique des religions mondiales [The economic ethic of world religions] in order to understand the approach made by Weber and regrets that this was not placed at the beginning of the volume devoted to Confucianisme et taosme [Confucianism and taoism]. He also underlines the fact that the English-speaking reader has for a long time benefited from more favorable reception conditions, despite any reserves one may have concerning the English translation. Finally, and more essentially, he goes on to reconsider a major theme of the book - political domination. Thus Weber recognizes the role of hydraulic regulation in the development of bureaucracy without relating it, as does Wittfogel, to the principles of domination. He especially points out the effectiveness of the politics followed by the emperors aiming to avert any appropriation of employment and so doing, avoiding the re-forming of a feudal order. He strongly emphasizes the points which differentiate, despite the exam system, Chinese bureaucracy from modern bureaucracy, in other words the absence of dissociation between administrative spending and personal spending and the fundamentally literary character, not at all specialized, of the training. However, he does show, at the same time, the way in which the political weakness of the body of civil servants conciliates with their cultural pre-eminence, the well-read tradition forming an expression of cohesion and a legitimization of the imperial order