Analects 15.36: 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 15.36
子曰、君子貞、而不諒。
The Master said, “An exemplary person is steadfast, but not rigidly bound to their word.”
Commentary
translation Steadfastness and keeping one’s word 貞 gives steadfastness a positive value; 諒 can name fidelity to one’s word. The contrast is read here as rejecting a rigid insistence on fulfilling every pledge. Legge makes it a contrast between right firmness and mere firmness. The question at 13.20 about a person who invariably keeps a promise likewise tests such dependability against a fuller ethical judgment.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium