Analects 3.25: 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 3.25
子謂韶、盡美矣、又盡善也、謂武、盡美矣、未盡善也。
The Master said of the Shao, “Utterly beautiful, and utterly good as well.” Of the Wu he said, “Utterly beautiful, but not utterly good.”
Commentary
ethics Beauty and goodness can part The Shao and the Wu are musical works; in 7.13, the Master hears the Shao performed. Both receive exactly the same claim to complete beauty here. The distinction lies in 善, goodness: one has it fully and the other does not. The judgment requires more than aesthetic excellence, while leaving the reason for the difference unstated.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high