Analects 4.16: 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 4.16
子曰、君子喻於義、小人喻於利。
The Master said, “An exemplary person understands what is right; a petty person understands what brings gain.”
Commentary
ethics What makes sense to a person 喻 is understanding or grasping, repeated for both people. The objects of understanding differ: 義, what is right, and 利, what brings gain. This contrast shows how what a person cares about shapes what they readily understand.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium