Analects 4.3: 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 4.3
子曰、惟仁者、能好人、能惡人。
The Master said, “Only the humane can love people and hate people.”
Commentary
ethics Humaneness can make distinctions The saying gives love and hatred alike to the humane person. 能, “can,” concerns the capacity to direct these responses well: humaneness makes discriminating judgment possible.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium