Analects 4.6: 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 4.6
子曰、我未見好仁者、惡不仁者、好仁者、無以尚之、惡不仁者、其為仁矣、不使不仁者、加乎其身。有能一日用其力於仁矣乎、我未見力不足者。蓋有之矣、我未之見也。
The Master said, “I have yet to see anyone who loves humaneness or hates inhumaneness. Those who love humaneness put nothing above it. Those who hate inhumaneness practice humaneness by keeping inhumaneness from reaching them. Is there anyone who can give their strength to humaneness for a single day? I have yet to see anyone whose strength is insufficient. Perhaps there is such a person; I have yet to see one.”
Commentary
ethics Love and aversion at work Love of humaneness puts it above competing concerns. Hatred of inhumaneness is shown in practice: keeping it from touching one’s own conduct. The movement is from desire and aversion to what one does with one’s strength. The opening lack of examples sits beside the claim that insufficient strength has not been observed.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high
philology Who might the unseen person be? The final “such a person” most naturally looks back to someone whose strength is insufficient; Legge also links the qualification to that preceding claim. On this reading, the Master allows a possible exception to what he has observed. Because the Chinese leaves the reference implicit, the last line can also be heard returning to the still-unseen lover of humaneness at the opening.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium