Confucius 孔子 · 孔丘 Kong Qiu

🔊The word at the center of his teaching is rén, written with the signs for “person” and “two.” It has been translated as benevolence, humaneness, and goodness, and none fits exactly, because it names the whole quality of a person who is as a human being ought to be in relation to others. Asked what it is, he gives a different answer to each student. To one he says, “Love others.” To another he gives the rule he calls reciprocity: “What you do not want for yourself, do not do to others.” To his best student he gives the hardest answer: “To master oneself and return to ritual is rén.” Asked for the details, he adds: do not look at, listen to, say, or do what is contrary to ritual.

他的教導的核心字是「仁」，由「人」與「二」組成。它被譯成 benevolence、humaneness、goodness，沒有一個完全貼切；因為它指稱的，是一個在與他人的關係裡「成為人所應當是的樣子」的人的整體品質。有人問它是什麼，他對每一個學生的回答都不同。對一位他說：「愛人。」對另一位，他給了他稱為「恕」的那條規則：「己所不欲，勿施於人。」對他最好的學生，他給了最難的答案：「克己復禮為仁。」學生請問細目，他補充：「非禮勿視，非禮勿聽，非禮勿言，非禮勿動。」

🔊The pairing of inner goodness with outward ritual is his distinctive idea. By ritual, lǐ, he means the whole body of inherited forms through which people show respect: mourning, greeting, serving a meal, addressing a parent. A modern reader takes these for etiquette. Confucius saw in them the means by which raw feeling is shaped into something humane, as a language shapes thought. A child who is taught to bow to his elders is being taught to notice them. Done without feeling, the forms are empty, and he says so often. Done well, they make a community in which force is rarely needed. His political theory follows directly. Government is a matter of setting people right by example: “Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son.” The person formed in this way he calls the jūnzǐ, the gentleman, a word that had meant a nobleman by birth and that he redefined as a nobleman by character.

把內在的善與外在的禮配成一對，是他獨特的想法。他所說的「禮」，指的是人們藉以表達敬意的那一整套傳承下來的形式：守喪、問候、奉食、稱呼父母。現代的讀者把這些當成禮節。孔子在其中看到的，是把原始的情感塑造成合乎人道的東西的手段，就像語言塑造思想一樣。一個被教導要向長輩鞠躬的孩子，是在被教導去「注意到」他們。沒有情感而行，這些形式是空的；這一點他常說。行得好，它們造就一個很少需要動用強力的共同體。他的政治理論由此直接推出。為政就是以身作則地使人歸正：「君君，臣臣，父父，子子。」這樣養成的人，他稱為「君子」；這個詞原本指出身上的貴族，而他把它重新界定為品格上的貴族。

🔊Confucius wrote nothing that we can be sure of. What we have is the Analects, some five hundred short passages in twenty books, most of them beginning “The Master said.” It was put together by his students and their students over a period that may have lasted two centuries, and scholars agree that the books differ in date. The earliest layers are thought to lie in books 3 to 9, and some of the later books show the concerns of schools that formed after his death. The passages have no context and are arranged in no clear order, so that every reader must decide what question a given saying was answering. The biography in Sima Qian’s Records was written about four hundred years after the events, from materials of very uneven value, and includes stories told by his enemies.

我們能夠確定是孔子寫的東西，一樣也沒有。我們有的是《論語》：二十篇裡大約五百則簡短的文字，大多數以「子曰」開頭。它是由他的學生、以及學生的學生編成的，歷時也許長達兩個世紀；學者們一致認為各篇的年代不同。最早的層次被認為在第三到第九篇；較晚的幾篇，有些顯示的是他身後才形成的學派所關切的事。這些文字沒有脈絡，也沒有清楚的排列次序；所以每一位讀者都得自己判定，某一句話當初回答的是什麼問題。司馬遷《史記》裡的傳，寫於事發約四百年之後，所根據的材料價值極不均等，其中還包括他的敵人所講的故事。

🔊There is also the problem of the name. “Confucianism” has meant at different times the teaching of the Analects, the cosmology of the Han court, the metaphysics of the Song philosophers, and a state examination system. He would have recognized perhaps the first. Reading him well means setting aside what was later built in his name and listening to a man in conversation with his students, who is often tired, sometimes funny, and seldom sure that he has succeeded.

還有名稱的問題。「儒家」在不同的時代，指的分別是《論語》的教導、漢代朝廷的宇宙論、宋代哲學家的形上學，以及一套國家考試制度。他大概只認得出第一個。要把他讀好，就得把後來以他的名義建造起來的東西擱在一邊，去聽一個正在跟學生談話的人說話；他常常疲倦，有時很風趣，而很少確定自己成功了。