Analects 15.14: 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 15.14
子曰、躬自厚、而薄責於人、則遠怨矣。
The Master said, “Be demanding of yourself and sparing in your blame of others; then you will keep resentment at a distance.”
Commentary
ethics Demand and blame 厚 and 薄, thick and thin, give different weights to self-scrutiny and blame of others. The result is to distance 怨, resentment. Its owner is not named: the phrasing can leave room for both resentment felt toward others and resentment aroused in them. The English keeps that openness while preserving the unequal demands.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium