Analects 6.26: 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 6.26
子見南子、子路不說、夫子矢之、曰、予所否者、天厭之、天厭之。
The Master went to see Nanzi. Zilu was displeased. The Master swore an oath: “If I have done wrong, may Heaven reject me, may Heaven reject me!”
Commentary
philology The force of the oath The narrative presents Zilu’s displeasure at the visit to Nanzi and the Master’s answer under oath; it gives no reason for that displeasure. The compressed 予所否者 is read as the condition of the oath: “If I have done wrong.” Heaven is invoked twice to reject the speaker if he has acted wrongly, giving the defense the force of a self-directed curse.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium