Analects 15.33: 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 15.33
子曰、君子不可小知、而可大受也、小人不可大受、而可小知也。
The Master said, “An exemplary person cannot be judged by small matters but can be entrusted with great ones. A petty person cannot be entrusted with great matters but can be judged by small ones.”
Commentary
philology Being known and being entrusted 知 concerns what can be known or judged about someone; 受 concerns what they can receive as a responsibility. Small matters and great matters exchange places around those different verbs. The English takes the contrast as one of assessment and trust. The saying does not need to claim that an exemplary person is unable to perform a small task.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium