Analects 2.16: 為政 (Wei Zheng)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 2 connects government with the character and practices of those who govern. The pole-star image and the contrast between punishment and ritual give two ways of thinking about how people respond to authority. Four answers about filial devotion move through ritual, parental concern, reverence, and demeanor. Sayings on learning then test how knowledge appears in thought, conduct, and honest acknowledgment of limits. The closing exchanges return to public authority, trustworthiness, inherited ritual, and the courage to act on what is right. The collection repeatedly asks what gives outward action its substance.
Analects 2.16
子曰、攻乎異端、斯害也己。
The Master said, “Pursuing divergent teachings is harmful indeed.”
Commentary
translation Study or attack? 攻 can mean working at something or attacking it. Legge reads a warning about studying strange doctrines; the English follows that construction, taking 異端 as divergent lines of teaching. If 攻 means “attack” and 已 closes the sentence emphatically, attacking different teachings does harm. If 已 instead means “stop,” the attack reading can promise that the harm will stop. These are different constructions of the brief saying; it names no school.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
source variant The closing character The Chinese here prints 斯害也己, with 己, “oneself.” The Wikisource text has 已, a different character. The English reads 已 as a closing word of emphasis, “indeed”; Legge’s “injurious indeed” takes the same reading.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium