Analects 4.20: 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 4.20
子曰、三年無改於父之道、可謂孝矣。
The Master said, “If for three years a son does not change his father’s way, he may be said to show filial devotion.”
Commentary
ethics The father’s way after his death This saying repeats the closing sentence of 1.11, where the father’s death supplies the setting. “Filial devotion” means devotion to parents. The three-year demand concerns preserving the father’s way of conduct. The saying makes no exception for a father whose conduct was wrong. Lower-case “way” keeps that personal pattern distinct from the ethical Way.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high