Analects 1.11: 學而 (Xue Er)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 1 presents learning as a way of acting with others: practicing what one learns, serving parents, keeping faith with friends, governing with care, and accepting correction. Its voices return to the relation between inward character and outward conduct. Devotion to parents and respect for elder brothers are called the root of practicing humaneness; ritual gives harmony its measure. The dialogue about poverty, wealth, and poetry shows a learner carrying a lesson further. The book begins with bearing a lack of recognition and ends by asking whether we know other people.
Analects 1.11
子曰、父在、觀其志、父沒、觀其行、三年無改於父之道、可謂孝矣。
The Master said, “While the father lives, observe the son’s intentions; once the father has died, observe the son’s actions. If for three years he does not change his father’s way, he may be said to show filial devotion.”
Commentary
philology Whose intentions are observed? The Chinese leaves the person under observation implicit. The translation takes the son as the object of assessment: his intentions while the father lives, his actions after the father’s death. The change of circumstances thus changes the evidence available for judging him. A reading that makes the father’s intentions and actions the son’s models would distribute the pronouns differently.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium
ethics Three years without change The three-year requirement is stated without a qualification about which of the father’s practices deserve to continue. Keeping that pressure visible is part of reading the saying. “His father’s way” is lower-case because it names a particular person’s manner of conduct; the wording alone does not establish its identity with the ethical Way.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high