What Can We Learn from the Dialogues of Confucius?

The Dialogues of Confucius(Kongzi jiayu孔子家语;hereafter Dialogues)is a document dating to the Warring States period,or,rather,many documents collected together,all purported to originate in the ideas of Confucius(Kramers 1950;Yang2016).In his preface to the Dialogues,Kong Anguo says that the Dialogues is made up of the leftovers after the“most authentic and sensible”documents were formed into the Analects.But some parts of the Dialogues,he says,“reflect the original thoughts of Confucius.”