Contents · 3 sections · 2 min
Key Ideas
Rén (humaneness) — “love others.”
Lǐ (ritual) — the forms through which feeling becomes character.
The jūnzǐ, noble in conduct, contrasted with the petty person.
Filial piety as the root of virtue.
Learning and reflection together.
Government by moral example.
The rectification of names.
The Analects is a compilation of about five hundred short passages in twenty “books”, assembled by Confucius’s disciples and later followers over perhaps two centuries after his death. It is not organized by topic: sayings on government sit beside a description of how Confucius ate (“he did not eat when the meat was not cut properly”), and terse aphorisms beside vivid exchanges with disciples.
The opening
The Master said: “To learn and at due times to practise what one has learned — is that not a pleasure? To have friends come from afar — is that not a joy? To be unrecognized by others and not resent it — is that not the mark of a jūnzǐ?” (1.1)
Famous passages
- 2.4 — “At fifteen I set my heart on learning; at thirty I took my stand; at forty I had no doubts; at fifty I knew the decree of Heaven; at sixty my ear was attuned; at seventy I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.”
- 2.15 — “Learning without thinking is lost; thinking without learning is perilous.”
- 2.17 — “To know what you know and to know what you do not know — that is knowledge.”
- 4.8 — “If in the morning I hear the Way, in the evening I may die content.”
- 7.22 — “When three people walk together, one of them is sure to be my teacher.”
- 12.2 / 15.24 — “What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others.”
- 12.19 — the wind and the grass.
- 13.3 — the rectification of names.
- 13.18 — fathers and sons cover for each other.
- 15.29 — “To make a mistake and not correct it — this is a real mistake.”
The characters
The book is enlivened by the disciples: Yan Hui, Confucius’s favourite, poor and devoted, who died young (“Heaven has bereft me!”, the Master cried); Zilu, brave, blunt, impetuous, who challenged the Master and died in battle; Zigong, eloquent and successful in commerce; Zengzi, who examined himself three times a day. Confucius himself appears warm, ironic, sometimes frustrated, devoted to music (hearing the Shao music, he did not taste meat for three months, 7.14).
See Confucius and Confucianism.
Curiosities
did you know?- The Analects opens not with doctrine but with a question about joy: is it not a pleasure to learn and practise what one has learned?
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Can rituals make us better people, or only better-behaved ones?
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsConfucianism
The ethical and political tradition founded on Confucius’s teaching — humaneness, ritual, filial piety, learning and government by virtue — the backbone of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese civilization.
Tiruvaḷḷuvar
The Tamil poet-sage who wrote the Tirukkuṟaḷ — 1,330 couplets on virtue, wealth and love that form the most revered ethical work in Tamil, translated into more languages than almost any other Indian text.
Master and Slave Morality
Nietzsche’s genealogy — “good/bad” was the self-affirmation of nobles; “good/evil” was invented by the resentful weak to revenge themselves on the strong.
The Tirukkuṟaḷ
Tiruvaḷḷuvar’s 1,330 couplets in 133 chapters on virtue (aṟam), wealth and statecraft (poruḷ), and love (inbam) — a secular, universal ethic, compact and witty, the “Tamil Veda” and one of the most translated books of India.
The Kāmasūtra
Vātsyāyana’s treatise on kāma — pleasure, love and desire — as one of the three legitimate aims of life. Far more than a sex manual, it is a handbook of urban culture, courtship, marriage, friendship and the arts of living well.
What Is Justice?
From Thrasymachus’s “advantage of the stronger” to Rawls’s veil of ignorance — the question of what we owe each other and who should rule.