Analects 2.23: 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 2.23
子張問十世、可知也。子曰、殷因於夏禮、所損益、可知也、周因於殷禮、所損益、可知也、其或繼周者、雖百世、可知也。
Zizhang asked, “Can we know what things will be like ten generations from now?” The Master said, “Yin followed the ritual of Xia; what it took away and what it added can be known. Zhou followed the ritual of Yin; what it took away and what it added can be known. If others succeed Zhou, they can be known, even a hundred generations from now.”
Commentary
politics Knowing change through inheritance The last clause names the possible successors to Zhou. The two clauses before it show what makes them knowable: the ritual each ruling house inherits, what it takes away, and what it adds. Ritual supplies the evidence for the claim about the future; the final sentence leaves the successors themselves as what can be known.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium
philology Generations or ages? 世 can name a generation or an age of rule. Legge uses ages, within a sequence he identifies as dynasties. “Generations” keeps the successive scale from ten to a hundred without assigning a fixed span of years. The important contrast is between the changes already knowable and the longer future the answer claims can also be known.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium