Analects 6.21: 雍也 (Yong Ye)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 6 asks how character becomes visible in governing, learning, giving, and answering other people. Judgments of practical ability sit beside a refusal of office. Yan Hui’s love of learning, steadiness in humaneness, and joy under hardship are framed by grief at his early death. The short sayings test relations between substance and refinement, knowledge and delight, reverence and distance. The closing exchange moves from the achievement of helping the people on a vast scale to a nearby method of humaneness: using one’s own desire for a firm footing and progress to help others find theirs.
Analects 6.21
子曰、知者樂水、仁者樂山、知者動、仁者靜。知者樂、仁者壽。
The Master said, “The wise delight in water; the humane delight in mountains. The wise are active; the humane are still. The wise are joyful; the humane live long.”
Commentary
ethics Water and mountains Three parallel pairs set wisdom and humaneness alongside each other: water and mountains, activity and stillness, joy and long life. The images make the qualities distinct without ranking one above the other. “Still” keeps 靜 audible beside the mountains, whose steadiness gives the portrait its contrast with movement.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium
ethics Long life beside early loss The assertion that the humane live long stands in the same book as the account of Yan Hui’s early death and his sustained humaneness. Keeping both claims visible leaves a tension between the characteristic portrait and a particular life. The book provides no explicit reconciliation.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high