Analects 3.20: 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 3.20
子曰、關睢樂而不淫、哀而不傷。
The Master said, “‘Guanju’ is joyful without excess, sorrowful without harm.”
Commentary
ethics Joy and sorrow kept in measure Guanju is heard as music: its finale fills the ears in 8.15. Here the praise allows both joy and sorrow their full place. 淫 sets a limit on excess, and 傷 on harm. The two emotions differ, but each can be expressed without passing into a destructive degree. That measure joins the book’s concern with music to its insistence that ritual contain real feeling.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
source variant Two different characters in the title The displayed title ends in 睢. The title 關雎 ends instead in 雎 and is represented by Legge’s “Kwan Tsu.” “Guanju” follows that identification. The similar-looking characters are distinct, and the Chinese here retains the printed 睢.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium