Analects 15.32: 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 15.32
子曰、知及之、仁不能守之、雖得之、必失之。知及之、仁能守之、不莊以蒞之、則民不敬。知及之、仁能守之、莊以蒞之、動之不以禮、未善也。
The Master said, “If knowledge lets you attain something but humaneness cannot keep it, though you gain it you are bound to lose it. If knowledge lets you attain it and humaneness can keep it, but you do not preside with dignity, the people will not respect you. If knowledge lets you attain it, humaneness can keep it, and you preside with dignity, but you do not move the people through ritual, it is not yet good.”
Commentary
politics Gaining, holding, presiding, moving The object of attaining and holding is an unspecified 之, “it.” Presiding and the people’s respect make authority or office a plausible referent as the saying unfolds. Each stage adds a requirement: knowledge can gain, humaneness can keep, dignity can command respect, and ritual must govern how people are moved to act. The repeated clauses make each earlier success insufficient on its own.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium