On the Analects of Confuicus by Alex Leibowitz 1.1.

The master said, "To learn and in time accustom oneself to what one learns, isn't that pleasant? To have friends who come from far away, isn't that fortunate? If someone though unknown be not aggrieved, isn't he a great master?" The three blessings are learning (), friendship (), and humility. The man who partakes of these blessings can be called a great master (). Learning must be extended through practice (), and timely practice () becomes habit. You would not discover many areas in a which a man, through practice, made no progress. Thus with skill we must remember humility, as the old oil salesman said: " " -- "What I have is nothing other than a skilled hand." For the great ambition of men is to put their skills into practice, and to be praised for doing good. But to have acquired the skill, merely to be able to do what is good, is itself worthy of praise, even if one is not in a position to do it. And to be worthy of being praised, as Aristotle remarks, is the end of being praised: " , , ." -- "For still [those who aim to honor] seem to pursue it so that they might believe themselves to be good. So they seek to be honored by the prudent, and by those with whom they are acquainted, and because of excellence. So that it is clear that for such men as these excellence is higher [than honor]." To be known () -- or alternatively for men to know you -- is to be honored and to be esteemed according to one's talents, but as we have said, it is better to be worthy of being known than to be known. And the master himself has said this: ""-- "It is no trouble that no one knows me, for I must seek to be worth knowing." This is also evidenced by the life of the master, for he wandered from kingdom to kingdom and received no employment, but he constantly strove by learning and courtesy to be worth employing, and we can hope that had he been employed, the people would have known justice. For the master did not believe, as Socrates believed, that there is no place in politics for an honest man, but rather that there is no place for an honest man, except in politics. But whether we are esteemed is not up to us, and we should take care lest we are bitter and worthless, for it is too much even to be bitter and worthy, but the worthy enjoy their own worth. And if in addition to our learning and our worth we attract friends who take pains to pleasure us with their company, we can regard ourselves as happy. For to have many friends in many places and to see them though they live far away is worth celebrating, indeed. These then are the ideals we must strive for: to learn much and to accustom ourselves to our learning, to make many friends and to enjoy most of all the pleasures of their friendship, and to make ourselves worthy of the honor of serving others, whether we are entrusted with responsibilities or whether we are passed over. 1.2.

 Master Yow said: "By his acts a man of piety and fraternity, who yet loves to offend against his superiors, is rare indeed; who does not love to offend against his superiors, but yet loves to make trouble -- there are none such. A great master attends to the root; when the root are planted, the way grows up. The acts of a pious and fraternal man might indeed be the root of humanity." Humanity () is our great ideal. Humanity is what is common to men () -- it is that in virtue of which we are men -- and to achieve humanity is to become fully human. Humanity is what a human is to be. Master Yow asks us to consider, what are the roots of humanity? And what is contrary to humanity? Well why do we look for the roots? Because, says Master Yow, when the roots are planted, the way grows up (). It is for this reason that the roots are the great master's concern. The way () is likewise something natural: men have the seeds of goodness in themselves. The roots of humanity break out of the seeds. Tending to one's own nature is way to humanity. And the happiness of human beings is like the flourishing of a plant, which grows up healthy and strong all of itself provided the conditions for its progress are ripe. That is why we must take care to cultivate ourselves and to remove impediments. If only we can remove the impediments, we do not need to worry about the impulse, for the impulse is innate. Is it the case, then, that only by means of the great master will the way spring up, but only if the way has sprung up will there be a great master? No, for the master and the way grow together -- to become a great master is the way to be a great master. Humanity is not something beyond our reach: it is what we are already. He who knows this becomes humane. Master Yow would have us consider the roots of humanity to be piety () and fraternity (). Human beings do not grow alone, and tending to oneself means tending to the others. Seeing humanity in the others, taking care of it in the others, removing impediments to its growth in the others, is also necessary. To look after the others as one looks after oneself is fraternity (). But to submit and be looked after by the others, as one submits to be looked after by oneself, and as the others submit to be looked after by oneself, is piety (). It is admitting that the others know you better than you know yourself, somehow. For piety is also submitting to be governed by those who know the good, and insofar as we recognize that we do not know our good better than the others, we will submit to be governed by them too. But how am I to know who I am to submit to? For one question was how anybody could become good if there were no teachers to make him good, and the other question is how I recognize a teacher if I do not know what I am to be taught. About this the master has the following sayings: The master said, "Three men walking -- certainly my teacher is among them -- pick out the good and follow them, but what is not good, shun it." (7.22) The master said, "When you see what is fine, consider how to equal it; when you see what is not fine, look into yourself." (4.17)

This could be the answer, that what is good and what is fine strikes me. And if what is good and what is fine has not struck me, it has struck others. To reverence itself reverence is due -- we should always respect what other men respect, if only because we respect that they respect it. We must cultivate in ourselves a feeling for submission and humility. Above all this is to be avoided, thinking that one's lack of knowledge in matters of good and evil is itself a distinction. If we recognize that we do not know, it is only so that we can seek an instructor. And when the master says that among three men I must have a teacher, we should understand that other people will teach us how to behave, too -- by their actions, not only their words. For observing the calamities that befall them and how they hold up or succumb; also by observing their virtues and their vices -- we learn to reflect upon what is good and what is bad in a man, what is to be imitated and what is to be avoided. Thus the study of history, a wide acquaintance with the affairs of men in all their variety, is most of all desirable in a student. And yet for every criticism which we would allege against our fellows, we must be prepared to ask ourselves, "Would I have done better? Am I not also vulnerable? Isn't this my own weakness?" For we must recognize that we ourselves are shallow, foolish, envious, greedy, petty, and we must take these vices when we see them in others as a strong reproach to ourselves. For if I have not sinned, I must be thankful that I have not had the opportunity, and if I have had the opportunity, I must be thankful that I have not had the temptation. Being good is as much a matter of luck as a matter of training, and training indeed is simply the harnessing of luck to make skill, as a stream is diverted into a channel. So in sum, if we learn to respect others and submit to them, we will not love to offend against them; and if we do not love to offend against them, we will not make trouble. For the end of humanity is harmony with men. (Ideally, respect is mutual. But our duty towards others is to discover what is worthy in them, and we would express this duty by suppressing what is unworthy in ourselves. What is unworthy in me, is that I estimate my own worth higher than I estimate the worth of those around me. Now if someone really does not treat me with the respect I deserve, if someone offends against me, then he is being unworthy. But if I only believe I am being offended against, when I am not, my belief is an expression of my own lack of worth in respect to the other person. To take offense when chidden, though the chiding is deserved, is an example. The question is whether it is better to submit to others that ought to submit to you, or to have others submit to you when you ought to submit to them -- similarly, whether it is better to wrong or to be wronged. If we were all of us more willing to be wronged, fewer of us would be wronged. If only we all treated one another as our superiors, we would all become brothers. There is to be a harmony between piety and fraternity.) The word '' signifies the younger brother. One can ask why the ideal of brotherhood was not signified with the word for the older brother, ''. I answer, because one desired to emphasize the tenderness and submission even of equals to each other which is required by respect. 1.3. The master said, "Clever speech, a pleasant aspect, rarely are humane." Master Yow having just instructed us what humanity is, the Master (Kong) reminds us what humanity is not. It is interesting that he chooses the word '', for this word means not only the ingratiating, but also the honorable, even the official. Thus the Master corrects his pupil Yow by warning us that though

submission to one's superiors () is at the root of humanity, we must be careful not to let ourselves be carried away by the appearances of rank, but we must learn to recognize true worth. Humanity is not a matter of appearing to be superior, and we should not cultivate such appearances for their own sake. We must nonetheless avoid the opposite error, suspicion of everything that appears to be superior, of all public expressions of rank, of honors -- for then we are no longer . When I allow myself to be carried away, convinced that the wicked prosper and good men live in obscurity, then I am convinced that the whole world is a conspiracy against me, that my own worth is not recognized -- really that I am the one who deserves the honors that are awarded to others. In such a state of mind, I imagine that the others are fools, hypocrites, and so forth, and can hardly be said to respect them as equals. This must be reproved. It remains a difficult balance, because there is an aspect in things that belies their true worth, and we must remember this. But if we become too skeptical, we risk vanity. We must guard against the mere appearance of worth in ourselves and in others, but to dwell on either is in a way to dwell on the other (it is only because I appear to myself to be so good, that I am bitter, , over what is seemly in others). Another thing to guard against is the , the clever or eloquent word (speech). Both in speech and in action, there is a kind of beauty that goes no farther than appearances and can even mask a much less seemly reality. In one aspect, beautiful speeches are hypocritical -- they are like the soliloquies of certain characters in Proust who affect depth in their discourse but really are concerned with mere words and the affectation of a style (the Romantic). In another aspect, the affectation of beauty in speech also distracts both from the truth in deliberation and from the good in action, for the speech is belabored and the deed is postponed. Thus also Aristotle says, , , , . , , . (1105b) But the many do not do these things, but having retreated into words think they philosophize and in this way will be studious, doing something similar to the sick who carefully listen to their doctors, but do none of the things prescribed -- so that neither will they be well in body who are so treated, nor will these who so philosophize be well in soul. Our constant danger, then, is to think that because we listen to the words of great men, we therefore have made ourselves good. At best, venerable discourse is a signpost and a map, but those who would follow it have yet to embark upon a long and difficult road. And there is this further difficulty, that we must take care to minutely scrutinize the words of the masters, lest we be led astray by false lights. And yet in that there is a difficulty too, for we must remember that the end of all scrutiny and philosophizing is living well -- that we consider the problems in order to solve them. So being a good philosopher always yields, in the end, to living well. And as Wittgenstein said too, the end of doing philosophy is to stop doing philosophy, in a way, but really to have arrived at the truth -- and to live with it. And there is a much less seemly use of cunning words against which we should be on our guard -- the use of words by others to persuade us to carry out what is not good, and afterward to rationalize what cannot be justified. The masking of ugly truths by beautiful words cannot be unknown, for even in our day there are those who have been ready to call tyrannies "democracies", license, "freedom", and so forth. And even what is good in part sometimes is not good on the whole, for often the name of what is merely better

is usurped for that which is best, and we are asked to be content with something less than the whole good, because we have failed to observe that we enjoy at present what is only good in part. And it is hard to know if, when we speak this way, we are deceived or confused -- for having once been deceived ourselves, we proceed to deceive others, and people who persuade others end up persuading themselves. Whether the misuse of language begins with deceiving or merely with deception, malicious intention to conceal the good or merely error as to its true nature -- is also a difficult question. It should have gone without saying that we should be continually on our guard, no less I who write these words as you who read them, that we are trying to apply names to the right things and taking good counsel for the sake of right conduct. It would not be right to say that the measure of the truth of an ethical discourse is whether one can live by it, and it is not helpful to say that the measure of its truth is whether one should live by it, but between these two there must be something, which is to try to reform our conduct and see whether we have not, in doing so, done well. And the most difficult thing, in the end, is to concern ourselves always with particulars, for it is easy and edifying to extol honesty in one's dealings with friends, but difficult and disconcerting to consider, in my dealings with Jones, or Smith and associates, whether I have done as I should, and if there is blame on whose side it lodges.