Analects 12.10: 顏淵 (Yan Yuan)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 12 asks how humaneness takes shape in conduct: self-mastery and ritual, care toward others, and words answerable to action. Its political exchanges test government through trust, the people’s livelihood, and the example of those who lead. Questions about clear sight and genuine accomplishment make understanding people more demanding than knowing their reputation. The account of promoting the upright brings that judgment into public service, while Zixia’s examples place the distancing of the inhumane beside the claim of reform. The closing sayings return to friendship as a practice of advice, restraint, learning, and support for humaneness.
Analects 12.10
子張問崇德、辨惑。子曰、主忠信、徒義、崇德也。愛之欲其生、惡之欲其死、既欲其生、又欲其死、是惑也。誠不以富亦祇以異。
Zizhang asked how to elevate virtue and recognize delusion. The Master said, “Put wholeheartedness and trustworthiness first, and turn toward what is right: that is how to elevate virtue. When you love someone, you want them to live; when you hate them, you want them to die. Having wanted them to live, you then want them to die: that is delusion. ‘Truly, not for wealth, but simply for a change.’”
Commentary
source variant Turning toward what is right This Chinese prints 徒義. The English reads the turning or moving sense of 徙 in place of printed 徒; Legge likewise describes continued movement toward what is right. That supports the chosen sense, without making the two written characters identical. The Chinese remains 徒. The preceding instruction, 主忠信, repeats the call to put wholeheartedness and trustworthiness first.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
ethics Desire reverses its own judgment The same person is first wanted alive and then wanted dead as affection turns to hatred. The diagnosis 惑, delusion or confusion, falls on that reversal. The opening direction toward what is right supplies a measure outside these shifting wishes. The concern returns in the account of anger in 12.21.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
translation The abrupt closing words The final words introduce wealth and difference without naming a person or explaining the connection. Legge treats them as a quotation and supplies a woman whose wealth is at issue. The English also marks a quotation, but leaves the person unstated and takes 異 as a change. Its relation to the preceding reversal of desire remains uncertain; the passage does not itself identify the quotation’s source.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium