Analects 17.1: 陽貨 (Yang Huo)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 17 puts learning under pressure: Confucius faces invitations to serve amid rebellion, and students question his choices. A sequence on six qualities shows how even humaneness, trustworthiness, and courage can go wrong without learning. Poetry, music, and ritual recur as practices that shape feeling and conduct; polished speech and respectable appearances repeatedly come under suspicion. The mourning debate asks whether ritual’s duration answers to gratitude and grief as well as to public continuity. The closing sayings rank rightness above courage, make room for moral hatred, generalize harshly about women and petty people, and treat a person’s reputation at forty as settled.
Analects 17.1
陽貨欲見孔子、孔子不見、歸孔子豚、孔子時其亡也、而往拜之。遇諸塗。謂孔子曰、來、予與爾言、曰、懷其寶而迷其邦、可謂仁乎。曰、不可。好從事而亟失時、可謂知乎。曰、不可。日月逝矣、歲不我與。孔子曰、諾、吾將仕矣。
Yang Huo wanted to see Confucius, but Confucius would not see him. He sent Confucius a pig. Confucius chose a time when Yang Huo was away and went to thank him, but met him on the road. Yang Huo said to Confucius, “Come, let me speak with you. Can someone who keeps his treasure to himself and lets his state go astray be called humane?” “No.” “Can someone who loves taking part in affairs yet repeatedly misses the opportunity be called wise?” “No.” “The days and months slip away; the years do not wait for us.” Confucius said, “Very well. I will take office.”
Commentary
politics An invitation turned into a challenge Yang Huo’s gift brings Confucius out to make a return visit, even though he chooses a time when the giver is absent. On meeting him, Yang Huo turns humaneness and wisdom into arguments for taking office: keeping one’s “treasure” unused leaves the state without help. Confucius’s final promise names office but no particular employer.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
philology Who gives the short answers? The two replies, “No,” have no named speaker in the Chinese. They can be heard as Confucius’s replies to Yang Huo’s questions, as Legge takes them, or as answers Yang Huo supplies within his own challenge. The English leaves the replies unlabelled. 我 in the remark about the passing years is likewise not marked for number; “us” makes the appeal shared.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium