Analects 15.12: 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 15.12
子曰、已矣乎、吾未見好德如好色者也。
The Master said, “It is hopeless! I have yet to see anyone who loves virtue as much as beauty.”
Commentary
philology An exclamation of frustration 已矣乎 voices exasperation, as in the complaint about failing to see one’s own faults at 5.26. The rest repeats 9.17’s contrast between loving virtue and loving beauty. 色 concerns visible beauty and its attraction; 好 asks how strongly virtue is desired. The complaint measures devotion against a powerful desire, rather than merely asking whether someone can recognize a virtue.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high