Analects 9.25: 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 9.25
子曰、三軍可奪師也、匹夫不可奪志也。
The Master said, “An army of three divisions can be robbed of its commander; an ordinary person cannot be robbed of resolve.”
Commentary
source variant The army’s commander The Chinese here prints 師. The Chinese Wikisource text has 帥, “commander,” and Legge also understands a commander. That is the reading used in English. It makes the leader whom an army can lose the counterpart to the resolve that an ordinary person cannot be stripped of.
Basis: sourced
Confidence: medium
ethics Force and resolve The saying sets the force of three military divisions beside one ordinary person. Its claim is that outward power can lose its center of command while a person’s 志, settled purpose or resolve, remains their own. The contrast gives the person of no special rank a kind of firmness the army cannot guarantee.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium