Analects 15.22: 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 15.22
子曰、君子不以言舉人、不以人廢言。
The Master said, “An exemplary person does not advance someone on the strength of their words, or dismiss words because of the person who speaks them.”
Commentary
ethics Separate judgments of people and words 舉 concerns raising or advancing a person, while 廢 concerns setting words aside. The tests run in opposite directions. Persuasive speech alone cannot establish someone’s fitness; an unfavorable judgment of the speaker cannot by itself invalidate what was said. The saying gives discernment more than one object.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high