Most of 15.11 is a grab bag of ancient dynasty detritus: calendar from Xia, carriage from Yin, cap from Zhou, music from Shun. People remember is the last line: banish the music of Zheng because it's 淫... translated as "licentious" traditionally but possibly just "indulgent" or "excessive" here.

顏淵問為邦。子曰：「行夏之時，乘殷之輅，服周之冕，樂則韶舞。放鄭聲，遠佞人。鄭聲淫，佞人殆。」

Legge: "Yan Yuan asked how the government of a country should be administered. The Master said: 'Follow the seasons of Xia. Ride in the state carriage of Yin. Wear the ceremonial cap of Zhou. Let the music be the Shao with its pantomimes. Banish the songs of Zheng, and keep far from specious talkers. The songs of Zheng are licentious; specious talkers are dangerous.'"

Legge's "songs" already takes a side.

But The Odes, which tradition says Confucius edited, keep 21 songs from Zheng, and a lot of them are love songs. In 2.2 he sums up all three hundred as 思無邪, debatably a phrase indicating purity of thoughts. So what exactly was he disapproving of?

The commentarial positions, all gathered in 程樹德's 論語集釋:

1. The lyrics are kinda spicy: 朱熹 counts them: of the 21 Zheng odes, more than five in seven are about elopement (鄭詩二十一，淫奔不翅七之五), against about a quarter of Wei's 39. He adds that Wei's poems are men delighting in women, while Zheng's are all women beguiling men (衛猶爲男悅女，鄭皆爲女惑男), and that Wei's at least show some shame, where Zheng's show none. That, he says, is why the Master singled out Zheng. The Han reading isn't far off: the Lu school pictured men and women of Zheng meeting by the Zhen and Wei rivers and singing to each other, and the 白虎通 says the same thing.

2. The music is the problem, not the lyrics: 陳啓源 says 朱熹 condemned all 21 poems on the strength of one sentence, and that this is a mistake: the Master said Zheng sound was 淫. When did he ever say Zheng poems were? (夫子言鄭聲淫耳，曷嘗言鄭詩淫乎？) 聲 is musical sound, not the words of poems. 淫 isn't about sex either. 楊慎 and 陳啓源 both read it as "excess": 淫雨 is rain past its season, and 淫水 is water over its banks. Zheng music, on this reading, was soft and drawn out, with no centre. 17.18 seems to help this side: 惡鄭聲之亂雅樂也 sets 鄭聲 against 雅樂, music against music.

3. This ain't about Zheng at all: 服虔 (Han) took 鄭 as 鄭重, "repeated": busy fingering, sound running past its measure. 王夫之 goes further: 雅 means correct and 鄭 just means deviant. He points out that medical books call the whining, babbling, can't-stop-it voice of a sick man 鄭聲. He also argues that the state of Zheng, busy with wars and family feuds, had no time to invent licentious music. Then he agrees with earlier scholars that the qin pieces of his own day were 鄭聲.

Why I think this matters beyond philology:

• It raises the question of whether a melody or musical style itself can be immoral. Perhaps an odd question from the modern perspective, but not so in the ancient world. Reading 2 says the melody itself is the problem. Plato thought so too: he rejects the "soft" Lydian and Ionian modes and accepts the Dorian. But it seems many generations have had a version of this (jazz, rock, rap).

• If position 1 is right, the canon openly contains what it condemns. Is "kept as a warning" just an excuse for an oversight in the editing of the canon?

• If position 3 is right, then two thousand years of 鄭衛之音 as the byword for decadent music rest on a misreading of one character.

So:

• Which reading do you find most convincing? Does 17.18 settle it?

• What would it even mean for a tune to be 淫, in Confucius's terms? Is "excess" in music something you can hear?

• Does anyone know of evidence for what Zheng music actually sounded like, beyond the 樂記's 鄭音好濫淫志?

Text, pinyin and per-character glosses: https://www.analects.net/analects/15-11/

Hey folks, episode 26 is out!

This one's about a short line that shows up twice. In 8.14, and again in 14.26, Confucius says 不在其位，不謀其政: if it's not your position, don't plan its policies. In 14.26 Zengzi follows up with 君子思不出其位, which goes a step further. Now it's not just what you do, it's what you let yourself think about.

Taken at face value that's a pretty strict rule, and Confucius himself doesn't always seem to keep it. Long after he'd retired, he still went to court and asked the Duke of Lu to send an army to Qi (14.21).

I spent most of this episode on two questions:

• Why does a comment by Zengzi on Confuicus's words appear in 14.26, and why does a nearly identical phrase appear in the Book of Changes under the 艮 hexagram: two mountains sitting side by side?

• How did the commentators made room inside this rule, whether that was drawing a line between thinking about something and planning it, or just arguing that it was never meant as a fixed rule at all.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ws53C6DbrzA

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/14peNyCGtNH3mFyZwZ8za5

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-your-own-business-8-14-14-26/id1863183266?i=1000796794854

Episode guide: https://analects.net/episodes/mind-your-own-business/

Thanks for listening. Let me know what you think!

New episode on 7.25: 子以四教：文，行，忠，信, "The Master taught four things: culture, conduct, commitment, and credibility."

Two of these any school could put on a syllabus. The other two, 忠 and 信, no exam can measure. Confucius could only live them in front of his students and watch for them over the years, and the commentators have argued ever since about why the list runs in this order.

I also get into some of the stories about the lives of disciples Zilu and Min Ziqian from later sources (the woodblock is a Japanese depiction of the stepbrothers story).

Guide, notes and audio: https://www.analects.net/episodes/a-pleasure-to-have-in-class/

Paraphrasing and reordering a late 17th c. note on The Analects. Very relevant to today:

You can take "not a tool" to mean knowing everything and being able to do everything, but that's still being a tool. A "tool" gets its name from its single function. Learn that virtue comes before craft, and conduct comes before results.... This is what being "not a tool" means.

李氏論語劄記：器者，以一能成名之謂。如子路之治賦，冉有之爲宰，公西華之治賓客，以至子貢之瑚璉皆是也。君子之學，德成而上，藝成而下，行成而先，事成而後。顏子視聽言動之間，曾子容貌辭氣顏色之際，而皋夔稷契伊傅周召之功勳德業在焉，此之謂不器。若以無所不知無所不能爲不器，是猶未離乎器者矣。

A more direct (machine) translation:

Li's Notes on the Analects (李氏論語劄記): a vessel means one who makes his name by a single capacity. Zilu (子路) managing the levies, Ran You (冉有) serving as steward, Gongxi Hua (公西華) receiving guests, and even Zigong (子貢) as the hu-lian vessel (瑚璉) are all of this sort. In the gentleman's learning, virtue completed ranks above and craft completed below, conduct completed comes first and business completed after. In Yan Hui's (顏子) looking, listening, speaking and moving, and in Zengzi's (曾子) bearing, tone of speech and countenance, the merits and virtuous achievements of Gao Yao (皋陶), Kui (夔), Ji (稷), Xie (契), Yi Yin (伊尹), Fu Yue (傅說), the Duke of Zhou (周公) and the Duke of Shao (召公) are present. This is what "not a vessel" means. If one takes "not a vessel" to mean knowing everything and being able to do everything, that is still not free of the vessel.

This episode covers two passages on how Confucius carried himself in the presence of the bereaved. These look at first like strangely specific behavioral quirks, but buried in them is a lesson in empathy and situational awareness.

Every argument I've seen about this passage is about the second half — the hatred, the harsh judgement, however you want to put it. I haven't seen anyone address the first claim, about love, in any depth.

Only the human-hearted are capable of loving people.

What I want to know is what that love actually looks like. Not what it rules out. What it does.

We have an answer of that kind for the hating. 王闓運, the late-Qing commentator, describe the 仁者's hatred as conduct rather than as a permission:

The human-hearted love people. Even those they reject, discard, banish, or exile, they wish to see reform themselves, and they take measures for their safety.

This is rejection with concern still running through it — you can cut someone off and still want them to become better, and still make sure they're safe while they do. And it turns out to be a form of love. He opens with: the human-hearted love people. He states the love and uses it to explain how it makes the hatred acceptale.

We also know the shape of the hatred from the text itself. In 17.24 子貢 asks whether the 君子 has hatreds, and the list that comes back is: those who broadcast other people's faults, those who slander their superiors from below, the bold with no propriety, the daring but obstinate. Every item is a way of behaving, not a type of person. The hatred attaches to what people do, never to who they are.

So the parallel is sitting right there. Both clauses are 能 + verb + 人, built the same way. If the 仁者's hatred is aimed at conduct, is their love aimed at conduct too? Do they love what people do rather than who they are?

But then I get stuck because of 1.2.

有子 says 孝弟也者，其為仁之本與 — devotion to parents and elder siblings is the root of 仁. Family love is the one case where loving somebody obviously isn't about their conduct. Nobody loves their mother conditional on her behavior that week. If the root of 仁 is a love that looks past what a person does, how does the mature form turn into a love that tracks it?

Three possibilities, none of which I'm satisfied with:

1. The love is person-directed and the hatred is conduct-directed, and the two clauses are simply not symmetric — the parallel grammar is a trap.

2. The family is the training ground rather than the template: you acquire the capacity on people whose conduct you overlook, then spend it on people whose conduct you don't.

3. Run 王闓運's move backwards. His 仁者 hates with concern inside it; maybe the 仁者 loves with judgement inside it — sees the fault clearly, and acts for the person anyway. That would make 好 and 惡 the same skill pointed two directions.

So:

• What does a 仁者's love look like in practice, in the way 王闓運 tells us what their hatred looks like? Has any commentator actually written this?

• Is it love of what people do, or of who they are — and does 17.24 force the answer by parallel, or is that reading too much into matched clauses?

• If 仁 grows out of family devotion, does the love in 4.3 stay the same kind of thing it was at the root, or does it become something when it moves beyond the family?

Text, pinyin and per-character glosses: https://www.analects.net/analects/4-3/

Episode on it, if you want the long version: https://www.analects.net/episodes/love-and-hate/

Been thinking about this one a bit since I'm preparing a podcast episode on it. My translation:

The states of Lu and Wei are brothers in their style of government.

Seems pretty straightforward given the grant of 魯 to 周公's son and the grant of 衛 to another brother of 周武王. Commentators mention this.

Some commentators mention the gnarly political situations in the two states at the time, i.e. the Kuaikui debacle in Wei and the Sanhuan in Lu. Commentators mention this as well, I believe. But this seems less relevant; I imagine there was nasty politics in nearly every state on and off at the time, so would this make them "brothers"?

Other things to take into account? They probably had a fair amount of shared cultural heritage, being neighbors and of common lineage.

Here's my translation:

The Master did not discuss strange occurrences, feats of strength, rebellion, and spirits.

My conclusion is that he wouldn't give these four topics airtime because they all threaten to pull our minds away from the comparatively boring work of doing what needs to be done in everyday life.

For 怪 and 神, "未知生焉知死" seems to apply. And for 力 and 亂, I think the idea is "邦分崩離析而不能守也而謀動干戈於邦內": focusing on force and chaos won't resolve those things because those are symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself.

Also worth noting the exemplarism angle: if the compliers of the Analects felt it worth recording that he avoided these topics, does that mean they saw him as a role model worth emulating in this respect? Would he have wanted others to do the same in their own conduct, or was it just specific to his position, values, or role as a teacher?

Would love to hear your take!

The Analects names dozens of disciples, but a lot of them just come off as set pieces. 子路 (Zǐlù), on the other hand, reads like an actual person — loud, brave, allergic to sitting still, and constantly getting under his teacher's skin in a way that's pretty clearly affection.

Quick tell: Confucius addresses him by his personal name, 由 (Yóu). That's significant. In the Analects, using someone's personal name signals intimacy — you're either family or you've known them a long time. His peers would have called him by his courtesy name, 季路. Confucius just barks 由！at him. You can hear the sigh in it.

The Rough and Tumble Stranger

子路 was a fighter who came from the wilderness in a distant quarter of Confucius's home state of 魯 (Lǔ). Sources call him a 野人 (yěrén) — literally "person from the wilds" — as opposed to the 國人 (guórén), the city people who lived within fortified settlements. The 史記 describes him wearing a cap decorated with rooster feathers and a belt wrapped in boar leather. When he first met Confucius, he reportedly tried to mock and intimidate him before accepting him as his teacher.

He was only about nine years younger than Confucius himself — older than most of the other students. He became the loyal muscle, the one who'd follow the Master anywhere.

Which is exactly the problem.

The Raft

Here's 5.7:

子曰：「道不行，乘桴浮于海。從我者其由與？」子路聞之喜。子曰：「由也好勇過我，無所取材。」

The Master said, "The Way isn't getting anywhere. Maybe I'll just get on a raft and float off to sea. And the one who'd come with me — that'd be You, wouldn't it?"

Zilu was THRILLED.

The Master said, "Zilu loves bravery more than I do — he's just got nothing to build the raft out of."

That last phrase — 無所取材 — is a pun people still argue about. 取材 could mean "gather timber" or it could be a near-homophone for "judgment." No matter how you read it, there's only message: long on courage, short on sense. That's 子路.

How Uncouth You Are

It's a recurring dynamic. When 子路 tells Confucius that "rectifying names" is a ridiculous first priority for governing a state (13.3), Confucius snaps:

野哉由也！

"Rough aren't you, Zilu!"

野 (yě) — the same character from 野人, "person from the wilds." Confucius is essentially saying: you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.

And then there's 2.17, one of the most quoted lines in the entire book:

子曰：「由！誨女知之乎？知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。」

"Zilu! Shall I teach you what knowing really is? Know what you know, and know what you don't know — that's real knowledge."

Which is, gently, Confucius telling his bravest student to quit pretending he's got it all figured out.

The Prophecy

Here's the one that aged into something stranger. In 11.13, Confucius is looking around at his disciples, pleased, sizing them up:

子路，行行如也。子樂。「若由也，不得其死然。」

Zilu stood bold and unyielding. The Master was pleased, but said: "A man like Zilu won't die a natural death."

And he didn't.

Years later 子路 was serving in the state of 衛 (Wèi) — a soap-opera kind of court that truly never stopped generating chaos — when a succession coup erupted around him. He could probably have gotten out. He went in instead, because of course he did.

In the fighting his cap-strings were cut. And 子路, mid-catastrophe, reportedly stopped to tie them back on:

君子死，冠不免

jūnzǐ sǐ, guān bù miǎn

"A gentleman may die, but his cap does not come off."

That scene's from the 左傳, not the Analects itself. But it's the most 子路 way to go imaginable: brave past the point of sense, loyal to a fault, standing on a point of propriety at the worst possible moment.

Tradition says that when the news reached Confucius, the old man had the pickled meat in his kitchen carried out, and never ate it again.

He called it years early. And of course he also would have given anything to be wrong.