Analects 19.21: 子張 (Zi Zhang)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Zizhang, Zixia, Ziyou, Master Zeng, and Zigong speak about learning, friendship, mourning, and public responsibility. Their judgments sometimes conflict: who should be welcomed as a friend, how teaching reaches the root, and whether impressive achievement amounts to humaneness. The final sayings turn to reputation and the limits of judging another person. Zigong defends the Master through images of hidden interiors, the sun and moon, and rule that would draw a response from the people.
Analects 19.21
子貢曰、君子之過也、如日月之食焉、過也、人皆見之、更也、人皆仰之。
Zigong said, “An exemplary person’s faults are like eclipses of the sun and moon. When they go wrong, everyone sees it; when they change, everyone looks up to them.”
Commentary
ethics The eclipse and the upward gaze A fault is visible to everyone, like an eclipse. After correction, the same observers look up again. The repeated “everyone” connects public exposure to renewed esteem. This answers the petty person’s concealment of mistakes earlier in the book with an image of acknowledged, reversible failure.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high