Analects 15.8: 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 15.8
子曰、志士、仁人、無求生以害仁、有殺身以成仁。
The Master said, “People of resolve and humane people do not seek to stay alive at the cost of humaneness. There are times when they sacrifice their lives to fulfill humaneness.”
Commentary
ethics Life and the fulfillment of humaneness 志士 names people with settled purpose; 仁人 names humane people. The two descriptions converge on a choice in which mere survival would damage humaneness. 成 is its fulfillment or completion, balancing 害, harm. The saying gives the cost its full weight: there can be occasions when this commitment requires giving up life itself.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high