Analects 4.17: 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 4.17
子曰、見賢思齊焉、見不賢而內自省也。
The Master said, “When you see a worthy person, think of matching them. When you see someone unworthy, turn inward and examine yourself.”
Commentary
ethics Two ways to turn a judgment inward The worthy person prompts a desire to match them. The unworthy person prompts self-examination. In both cases, judging someone else produces a question about one’s own conduct; the second response asks whether the same failing is present in oneself.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high