Analects 16.12: 季氏 (Ji Shi)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 16 opens with a threatened attack and a sustained argument about responsibility: ministers cannot excuse their part in a policy simply by saying their lord wants it. Two sayings then trace political authority as it passes into lower hands. Lists of friends, pleasures, errors, dangers, and concerns bring questions of judgment into ordinary conduct. Learning remains possible under difficulty, while words must be tested against lives actually seen. Wealth and lasting praise diverge in the contrast between a duke and two hungry men. A son’s account of learning the Poems and ritual makes the absence of special treatment itself a lesson. The book closes with the different titles used for a ruler’s wife, giving speech a precise place within social relations.
Analects 16.12
齊景公有馬千駟、死之日、民無德而稱焉、伯夷叔齊、餓于首陽之下、民到于今稱之。其斯之謂與。
Duke Jing of Qi had a thousand teams of four horses. On the day he died, the people had no virtue of his to praise. Boyi and Shuqi starved at the foot of Mount Shouyang, yet to this day the people praise them. Is this not what that saying means?
Commentary
ethics Possessions and praise The thousand teams make the duke’s wealth concrete. Boyi and Shuqi stand at the opposite extreme, hungry at the foot of a mountain, yet the people’s praise outlasts their deprivation. 德 makes the contrast concern moral worth and what remains praiseworthy. The passage offers no account here of why the two men went hungry.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
source variant The saying left unstated The final question refers to a saying without quoting it. Legge also leaves that reference unresolved. The Chinese comparison text supplies a parenthesized line before the duke’s story, but that line is absent here. The English therefore keeps the question open instead of supplying a missing quotation.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium