Analects 15.31: 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 15.31
子曰、君子謀道不謀食、耕也、餒在其中矣、學也、祿在其中矣、君子憂道、不憂貧。
The Master said, “An exemplary person makes plans for the Way, not for food. Farming may still leave one hungry; learning may bring a stipend. An exemplary person worries about the Way, not poverty.”
Commentary
politics The Way and a livelihood The two middle clauses unsettle simple guarantees: farming can coexist with hunger, and learning can carry 祿, an official stipend. The first and last clauses still give the Way priority over securing food or avoiding poverty. The argument acknowledges material outcomes while distinguishing them from the aim that should govern a person’s plans.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium