Analects 4.12: 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 4.12
子曰、放於利而行、多怨。
The Master said, “Act with gain as your guide, and you will stir up much resentment.”
Commentary
ethics Gain as a guide 放於 makes gain the model or guide for action. 多怨 leaves the bearer of resentment unstated. The English takes it as the resentment such conduct draws from others; the words also allow attention to the grievances generated in a life directed by gain. In either case, resentment is the consequence of that governing aim.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium