Analects 2.20: 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 2.20
季康子問使民敬忠以勤、如之何。子曰、臨之以莊、則敬、孝慈、則忠、舉善而教不能、則勤。
Ji Kangzi asked, “How can one make the people reverent, loyal, and diligent?” The Master said, “Oversee them with dignity, and they will be reverent. Show filial devotion and kindness, and they will be loyal. Promote the good and teach those who lack ability, and they will be diligent.”
Commentary
politics The leader acts first Ji Kangzi asks how to shape the people’s conduct. Each answer turns to the person leading them: dignity invites reverence, filial devotion and kindness invite loyalty, and promoting the good while teaching those who lack ability invites effort. 忠 is loyalty here because the question concerns the people’s relation to authority.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
source variant Diligence and encouragement The Chinese twice prints 勤, “diligent,” and the translation keeps it because it makes sense in both the question and the answer. Legge’s facing English, “eagerly seek to be virtuous,” matches the sense of 勸, “be encouraged,” a different character from the one printed here.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium