Analects 9.13: 子罕 (Zi Han)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 9 presents the Master through questions about his learning, skills, character, and place in the cultural tradition. His own accounts of ordinary work and unfinished attainment stand beside his students’ admiration. Ritual decisions distinguish useful change from arrogant display, while the jade exchange joins willingness to serve with waiting for someone who recognizes worth. Images of flowing water, earthworks, growing plants, and winter trees give passing time, effort, and tested character concrete form. Praise of learners sits beside regret and warnings about unfinished growth. The later sayings ask for correction, resolve, and the ability to weigh circumstances after learning to stand firm.
Analects 9.13
子欲居九夷。或曰、陋、如之何。子曰、君子居之、何陋之有。
The Master wanted to live among the Nine Yi. Someone said, “They are uncultivated. How would you manage?” The Master said, “If an exemplary person lived among them, what lack of cultivation would there be?”
Commentary
ethics Who supplies cultivation? The Nine Yi are the people among whom the Master proposes to live. The unnamed objector calls them uncultivated; the reply makes the presence of an exemplary person decisive. Its confidence shifts cultivation from a condition one must find in a place to something a person can bring there. The question retains the objector’s judgment so that the reversal remains audible.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium