Analects 14.24: 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 14.24
子曰、君子上達、小人下達。
The Master said, “The exemplary person’s understanding reaches upward; the petty person’s reaches downward.”
Commentary
philology Understanding has a direction 達 concerns reaching through or arriving at understanding; 上 and 下 give that movement opposite directions. The English keeps the directional image open. At 14.37 the Master again speaks of reaching upward, paired there with learning below. Lower learning in that later saying is a starting point, while here downward reach characterizes the petty person.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium