Analects 15.18-23 On What a Gentleman is (ES)

    In book 15 Confucius speaks about the gentleman and what constitutes them in six consecutively 

analects. He begins with an overall description of a gentleman in analect 15.18 saying, "The gentleman 

takes rightness as his substance, puts it into practice by means of ritual, gives it expression through 

modesty, and perfects it by being trustworthy. Now that is a gentleman!". Essentially the life-force that 

sustains a gentleman is being one rightness all the time, modest, and trustworthy, and he accomplishes

this through temperance and practice of ritual. A gentleman by having rightness as their 

substance would mean that modesty and trustworthiness is impossible without rightness. And

 rightness is impossible without being put into practice through ritual. Thus one could conclude that

 the most important or at least the central point of being a gentleman is understanding ritual and

 putting ritual into practice.

    Analects, 15.19-23 further breaks up the character of a gentleman in very short often one line 

responses. I believe that 15.19 and 15.20 go well hand in hand together. In 15.19 Confucius says, "The 

gentleman is distresses by his own inability, rather that the future of others to recognize him". Now the 

connection to 15.20 may be a bit of a stretch but it seems to me at least to follow directly from the 

previous one. In 15.20 we are told by Confucius that, "The gentleman is troubled by the possibility that

 his name will go uncelebrated after death". 15.20 seems to almost contradict 15.19 in that in 15.19 we

 see that the gentleman is or at least should be more concerned with any faults they might have rather

 then having any recognition he might gain. Yet, in 15.20 the gentleman is extremely concerned 

and troubled by the mere possibility that his name could go unrecognized by the masses, and I 

wonder why that is particularly given the next two analects.

     In 15.21 Confucius tells us that,"The gentleman seeks it in himself; the petty person seeks it 

in others". It is not 100% clear what the gentleman seeks in himself is, but if we are following on 

from 15.20 it could be recognition. Thus 15.21 would mean, that the gentleman seeks worthiness

 and rightness in themselves and need not recognition by others, while the petty man seeks

 recognition by others only and never through themselves. Along this same line of thinking

 Confucius says in 15.22, "The gentleman is proud, but not competitive. He is sociable, but 

not partisan". How is one not competitive, and seeks worthiness in themselves yet say in 15.20

that they will be troubled if they are not celebrated after death? That seems like the gentleman does

have a competitive heart or nature to him does it not? Lastly in analect 15.23, Confucius breaks away

a bit from his previous five analects and says, "The gentleman does not promote someone solely based

upon their words, nor does de dismiss words simply on account of the person who uttered them".

I take this as saying that the gentleman is or must be someone who carefully watches and listens to

an individual and their character before promoting him or her for any reason.       

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshMarch 29, 2022 at 9:52 AM

    Follow up the question. As we see in Plato and Aristotle, often what seems initially to be a contradiction isn't really one when you push to a deeper level. Bear in mind that all these ancients had plenty of cocky students who would immediately point out an apparent contradiction, so they would not be blind to the possibility of being interpreted as contradictory.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Analects 3.11

Here Confucius points to the palm of his hand and tells us that one who understands the di sacrifice "could handle the world as if he had it right here." The commentary on analect 3.10 mentions that the " di sacrifice was a special type of ancestor sacrifice, directed toward the ultimate progenitor of one's ancestral line." The details on how to perform it and by whom it was to be performed are something that had been largely forgotten by the time of the Zhou dynasty, which partially makes sense of Confucius' comment that there is a power that stems from understanding the rite. However, this does not completely explain it; there are still several questions that remain. What is it about sacrificing to one's roots that gives one political power? How are we to take understanding the ritual? Is this a form of knowledge or is it something else? Is the goal of ritual to reorder the individual person or does it have a mimetic effect that simultaneously reorders...
Read more

和 [hé] - Harmonious Ease in the practice of ritual (Analects 1.12) (RG)

和 1.12: Master You said: “When it comes to the practice of ritual, it is harmonious ease that is to be valued. It is precisely such harmony that makes the Way of the former Kings so beautiful. If you merely stick rigidly to ritual in all matters, great and small, there will remain that which you cannot accomplish. Yet if you know enough to value harmonious ease but try to attain it without being regulated by the rites, this will not work either.” - Slingerland, pg. 5, Analects Book 1  I’m writing the following post not because I am overly resistant to what we’re learning - I have a lot of respect for it, actually - or, because I am regressively clinging to what I already know, but because I am trying to contend with two opposing trains of thought: having spent a good amount of time admiring Zhuangzi, who uses Confucius as a comedic stock character in his writings, I am trying to find a way to transfer from one mode of teaching to another, which supposedly opposes it.  The con...
Read more

Christopher McCandless: The White Boy Who Could Have Just Read Confucius

“The cultivation of the person is done through the Way, and the cultivation of the Way is to be done through humanity. Humanity is Man.”       In this cosmic game of Confucian ping-pong, two are required to play. The emphasis that Confucius continues to place on virtue needing others to reach realization is of great importance in today’s day and age. Too often we are lead to believe that locking ourselves away in pursuit of accomplishing one great task is not only necessary to producing great work but also virtuous. Whether it be the pursuit of money or higher learning, to laboriously and single-mindedly chase after it often leads to higher social ranking. Confucius however, recognized the pitfalls of such narrow-mindedness and emphasis on self-importance.        Christopher McCandless, an infamous hero of western youth, seems to have struggled to the point of death to understand what Confucius considered basic truth… In order to obtain vir...
Read more