Analects 4.11: 里仁 (Li Ren)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 4 asks what it means to make humaneness a settled home. Love and hatred, poverty and wealth, haste and adversity test that commitment. The exemplary person’s concern with what is right is set beside the petty person’s concern with gain. Master Zeng explains the Master’s single thread as wholeheartedness and consideration for others. A cluster of sayings then places devotion to parents under the pressure of disagreement, distance, continuity, and aging. The closing sayings connect restraint in speech with action, return to the image of neighbors, and consider the cost of pressing correction on rulers and friends.
Analects 4.11
子曰、君子懷德、小人懷土、君子懷刑、小人懷惠。
The Master said, “An exemplary person keeps virtue in mind; a petty person, home. An exemplary person keeps penalties in mind; a petty person, favors.”
Commentary
philology Virtue, home, penalties, favors 懷 repeats four times for what occupies a person’s mind. 土 literally names earth or land; “home” takes it as the place of familiar attachment, where Legge broadens it to comfort. 刑 names penalties, keeping their coercive force visible. The contrasts place moral character and the consequences of wrongdoing beside attachment to place and benefits received.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium