Analects 15.39: 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 15.39
子曰、道不同、不相為謀。
The Master said, “Those whose ways differ cannot plan together.”
Commentary
philology Different ways and common plans 道 here names the courses people follow; the plural “ways” allows their difference to remain. 謀 concerns planning or counsel. The English takes 相 as mutual participation in planning, while the phrase can also concern giving counsel to one another. The obstacle is divergence of direction, which makes a shared undertaking difficult.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium