Analects 15.16: 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 15.16
子曰、群居終日、言不及義、好行小慧、難矣哉。
The Master said, “To spend all day together without speaking of what is right, delighting in little displays of cleverness—what a difficult case!”
Commentary
ethics Company without a serious subject The failure has two parts: talk never reaches 義, what is right, and cleverness finds expression only in little displays. The final exclamation leaves the group a difficult case without stating exactly what will become of it. The next saying makes what is right the substance of exemplary conduct.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high