Analects 15.2: 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 15.2
子曰、賜也、女以予為多學而識之者與。對曰、然、非與。曰、非也、予一以貫之。
The Master said, “Ci, do you think I am someone who learns many things and remembers them?” He answered, “Yes. Is that not so?” The Master said, “No. A single thread runs through it all.”
Commentary
philology Many things and one thread Ci is the name used for Zigong in the dialogue about the Poems at 1.15. Here the addressee replies without another name being supplied. 識 means retaining what one has learned; 貫 gives the image of a thread passing through. The same image occurs in the exchange with Master Zeng at 4.15. This reply asserts coherence among many things while leaving the unifying thread unnamed.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high