Analects 3.18: 八佾 (Ba Yi)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 3 examines what gives ritual its authority and meaning. Household displays borrow the forms of rulers, while humaneness, restraint, grief, and reverence test what those forms can express. Questions about poetry, inherited rites, sacrifice, and music show understanding at work: a learner carries an image further, the Master asks about everything, and a musical whole holds its parts together. Rulers and ministers each receive a standard of conduct. The book ends by distinguishing beauty from goodness and by asking what high office, ritual, and mourning are worth without the qualities they require.
Analects 3.18
子曰、事君盡禮、人以為諂也。
The Master said, “When you fulfill every ritual duty in serving a ruler, people call it flattery.”
Commentary
politics Ritual mistaken for flattery 盡禮 is carrying ritual observance through fully. Other people interpret that completeness as 諂, flattery. The saying separates conduct in a ruler’s service from the motive observers attribute to it, echoing the earlier temple scene in which careful questioning was mistaken for ignorance.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high