Analects 15.21: 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 15.21
子曰、君子矜而不爭、群而不黨。
The Master said, “An exemplary person has dignity without quarrelling, and joins others without forming factions.”
Commentary
ethics Company and faction 矜 gives a person a sense of dignity; 爭 turns relations toward contention. 群 allows participation in a group; 黨 narrows association into a faction. The two balances describe how someone can hold their ground and belong with others without making either relation a contest for advantage.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high