Confucius never provides a single unified definition of what he means by goodness (仁/rén) – the supreme value that he believed everyone should aspire to reach – in The Analects. Instead, he explores its many different facets throughout the text, either with simple statements or in response to questions from his disciples and contemporaries. Continue reading Analects Book 1: Confucius on goodness
子曰：「巧言令色鮮矣仁。」
Confucius said: “Smooth talk and an affected manner are seldom signs of goodness.” (1)
How do you deal with the sycophants that inevitably gravitate towards you like bees to a honeypot when you reach a leadership position? It’s easy enough to dismiss them for their “smooth talk” and “affected manner” as Confucius does in Chapter 3 of Book 1 of the Analects, but much more challenging to create a culture around you that doesn’t stand for such behavior in the first place.
Continue reading Leadership Lessons from Confucius: smooth talk and an affected manner
Goodness is such an ambiguous concept that even Confucius shied away from attaching an exact meaning to it. He found it much easier to describe the benefits that the cultivation of a strong internal sense of goodness can bring to people rather than defining its precise features. Continue reading Analects Book 4: on goodness
The ability to assess a given situation objectively and take the most appropriate action based on the facts of it is one of the key leadership qualities that Confucius highlights in Book 4 of the Analects. Continue reading Analects Book 4: on leadership
Book 4 of the Analects begins with an exploration of the meaning of goodness. Only people who practice it constantly in their daily lives without a desire for personal profit are able to enjoy true satisfaction and contentment. “Small-minded men” who only pursue it for personal gain will never be truly fulfilled and happy. Continue reading Analects Book 4: Overview
“If a man has no goodness, what can he have to do with the rites?” This is the rhetorical question that Confucius asks in Chapter III of Book 3 of the Analects. Continue reading Analects Book 3: on goodness
Virtue (德/dé) and goodness (仁/rén) are both at the summit of Confucius’s moral hierarchy. The main difference between the two is that while goodness is the highest value that a normal person can aspire to, virtue is the highest state that a ruler can aim for. Continue reading Analects Book 1: on virtue
As with Book 2 and Book 3, Confucius dominates Book 4 of the Analects with the curious exceptions of Chapter XV and Chapter XXVI. The only plausible explanation for these two anomalies is that they were slipped in by an unscrupulous or careless editor. Continue reading Analects Book 4 presentation
Book 20 of the Analects is a strange mutant beast, consisting of just three totally unrelated chapters. It’s almost as if its editor hacked it together after a few drinks and then decided to head back to his local for a few more cups of wine when he got bored with it. Continue reading Loosely connected threads
子游曰：「吾友張也，為難能也，然而未仁。」
Ziyou said: “My friend Zizhang is a man of great ability, but he has not yet achieved goodness.”
曾子曰：「堂堂乎張也，難與并為仁矣。」
Zengzi said: “Zizhang is so full of himself that it is difficult to cultivate goodness by his side.”
I presume that it wasn’t an editorial accident that these two put-downs of Zizhang are paired together. Continue reading Zizhang gets a kicking