Analects 15.30: 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 15.30
子曰、吾嘗終日不食、終夜不寢、以思、無益、不如學也。
The Master said, “I once spent all day without eating and all night without sleeping, thinking. It did no good. Better to learn.”
Commentary
ethics Thinking without learning The speaker describes an attempt that consumes both day and night while food and sleep are neglected. The verdict compares that effort with learning. Its target is thought pursued in this isolated, exhausting form; the saying does not explain what activity the better learning would involve. The first-person report gives the judgment the force of an unsuccessful trial.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high