Analects 15.29: 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 15.29
子曰、過而不改、是謂過矣。
The Master said, “To make a mistake and not correct it—that is a mistake indeed.”
Commentary
ethics The fault that persists 過 names both the original mistake and the mistake redefined at the end. 不改, failure to correct, is what comes between them. The saying concentrates judgment on allowing a known fault to stand, echoing the instruction to correct mistakes without shrinking from the task.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high