Analects 12.13: 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 12.13
子曰、聽訟、吾猶人也、必也、使無訟乎。
The Master said, “In hearing lawsuits, I am like anyone else. What matters is to bring it about that there are no lawsuits.”
Commentary
politics Beyond hearing the case The first sentence declines a claim to exceptional skill in hearing lawsuits. The second changes the aim: a situation in which lawsuits do not arise. Set beside the previous praise of settling a case, this expands the question from a good decision to the conditions that bring people into dispute. The means of achieving that condition are left unstated.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high