Analects 7.3: 述而 (Shu Er)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 7 builds a portrait of the Master through self-descriptions, conversations, and observations of his conduct. He loves the ancient tradition, learns through sustained attention, and teaches by asking learners to carry an indication further. Music, mourning, plain food, and illness show how these commitments enter daily life. Political judgment calls for knowing when to act or withdraw and for accepting criticism. Repeated disclaimers about his own attainment sit beside confidence in Heaven and the nearness of humaneness. The closing portrait holds warmth, firmness, respect, and ease together.
Analects 7.3
子曰、德之不脩、學之不講、聞義不能徒、不善不能改、是吾憂也。
The Master said, “Failing to cultivate virtue, failing to examine what I learn, hearing what is right yet being unable to move toward it, being unable to correct what is bad—these are my worries.”
Commentary
source variant The verb for moving toward what is right The Chinese printed here has 徒 in 聞義不能徒. Legge’s English makes the action movement toward what is right, a reading corresponding to 徙, “move,” rather than the printed 徒. “Move toward it” follows that reading. The difference matters because the worry concerns failing to change one’s conduct after hearing what is right.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
ethics Four failures to work on oneself The four worries join cultivation, examination of learning, movement toward what is right, and correction of what is bad. 講 suggests working through or discussing what has been learned. Knowledge brings a demand for change, so the last two clauses ask what happens after hearing or recognizing something.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium