Analects 16.7: 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 16.7
孔子曰、君子有三戒、少之時、血氣未定、戒之在色、及其壯也、血氣方剛、戒之在鬥、及其老也、血氣既衰、戒之在得。
Confucius said, “An exemplary person guards against three things: in youth, when blood and vital energy have not settled, against sexual desire; in maturity, when blood and vital energy are strong, against fighting; in old age, when blood and vital energy have waned, against grasping for gain.”
Commentary
philology Blood, energy, and changing dangers 血氣, blood and vital energy, gives the saying a bodily account of the three ages. The dangers change as that energy settles, strengthens, and declines. 色 here concerns sexual attraction; 得 concerns getting or acquiring. “Grasping for gain” makes that last danger audible again when gain appears in the ninth concern of 16.10.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium