Analects 15.11: 衛靈公 (Wei Ling Gong)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 15 tests exemplary conduct under pressure: hunger, going unrecognized, bad government, and the pull of clever speech. Its sayings ask how learning becomes judgment, how humaneness directs action, and how ritual gives that action form. The portraits of unwavering straightness and timely withdrawal leave room for different responses to public disorder. Praise must answer to examination, and responsibility repeatedly returns to oneself. Short assurances sit beside difficult tensions about reputation and the cost of humaneness. The book closes with the Master guiding a visitor through a room, giving the call for consideration a precise human setting.
Analects 15.11
子曰、人無遠慮、必有近憂。
The Master said, “Those who do not think far ahead are sure to have trouble close at hand.”
Commentary
philology Far thought and near trouble 遠 and 近 make the contrast spatial as well as temporal: thought reaches far, while trouble comes close. 必 gives the consequence the force of certainty within the saying. The compact warning turns anticipation into a present responsibility.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high