Analects 14.2: 憲問 (Xian Wen)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 14 tests ethical judgment in public life. Salary, courage, accomplished speech, and a reputation for virtue each prove incomplete measures of a person. The arguments about Guan Zhong ask how benefits to many people should weigh against a demand for personal fidelity. Accounts of officeholders, messengers, and failed appeals make responsibility concrete: competent service can sustain a flawed ruler, and a duty to speak can survive refusal. Short sayings turn from judging others toward learning, ability, and the relation between words and deeds. The later encounters press the choice between persistence and withdrawal when others offer no recognition. The dialogue with Zilu gives self-cultivation an expanding aim, ending in peace for all the people; the closing scenes test conduct through bodily bearing and the desire to seem grown before the work is done.
Analects 14.2
克、伐、怨、欲、不行焉、可以為仁矣。子曰、可以為難矣、仁則吾不知也。
“If the urge to outdo others, boasting, resentment, and desire never find expression, one can be considered humane.” The Master said, “That can be considered difficult. Whether it is humaneness, I do not know.”
Commentary
ethics Restraint and humaneness The opening speaker is unnamed. Four impulses are kept from finding expression, and the Master grants the difficulty of that achievement while withholding the name humaneness. 不行 concerns what is allowed to operate; it need not mean that the impulses have ceased to exist. The passage leaves open what positive conduct humaneness requires beyond this restraint.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium