Analects 1.16: 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 1.16
子曰、不患人之不己知、患不知人也。
The Master said, “Do not worry that others do not recognize you; worry that you do not understand others.”
Commentary
ethics Recognition turned outward The opening of the book asked how to bear others’ failure to recognize oneself. Its close shifts concern toward one’s own failure to know others. 知 is used on both sides of the sentence: “recognize” and “understand” bring out its different directions. The saying joins independence from acclaim to attention toward people.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high