Analects 1.3: 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 1.3
子曰、巧言令色、鮮矣仁。
The Master said, “Smooth talk and a pleasing expression: humaneness is rare there.”
Commentary
ethics A pleasing surface 巧言 and 令色 place verbal skill beside an attractive outward expression. The warning concerns the poor evidence such surfaces provide for humaneness. It need not condemn warmth itself: the Master’s warmth is praised in 1.10. 鮮 means rare or scarce, so the judgment is severe without being an absolute impossibility.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high