Analects 13.11: 子路 (Zi Lu)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 13 asks what makes government effective and what qualifies someone to serve. Leading by example, appointing capable people, setting names right, creating prosperity, and teaching all place demands on the ruler. Short claims about conduct stand beside long exchanges about speech, judgment, and the time needed for change. The book also tests uprightness, reputation, reliability, and harmony through particular relationships, sometimes leaving a difficult tension visible, as when family concealment is praised. Its closing sayings make preparation for war a responsibility toward the people who must fight.
Analects 13.11
子曰、善人為邦百年、亦可以媵殘去殺矣、誠哉是言也。
The Master said, “‘If good people governed a state for a hundred years, they could overcome cruelty and do away with executions.’ How true that saying is!”
Commentary
source variant Reading overcome where the source prints 媵 The source prints 媵殘. The Chinese comparison witness instead reads 勝殘, with 勝 meaning “overcome”; Legge likewise understands a transformation of violently bad people. “Overcome cruelty” follows that supported reading rather than assigning the sense “overcome” to 媵. The displayed Chinese preserves 媵.
Basis: sourced
Confidence: medium
politics The long work of ending executions The Master endorses a saying about a hundred years of good government. 殘 can point to cruelty or cruel people, and 去殺 places the ending of killing beside overcoming it. The governing context supports “executions.” The large span presents that outcome as the effect of sustained rule, rather than an immediate decree.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium