Analects 15.19: 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 15.19
子曰、君子疾沒世、而名不稱焉。
The Master said, “An exemplary person is troubled by reaching the end of life without their name being spoken of.”
Commentary
translation A name at the end of life 沒世 places the concern at life’s end; 名不稱 leaves the name unspoken or uncelebrated. Legge locates the neglect after death. The English stays with reaching life’s end, leaving the longer horizon in view. Set beside the previous refusal to worry about recognition, this saying gives remembrance a value of its own. The two emphases remain in tension.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium