加密数字货币交易所-《论语》详解：给所有曲解孔子的人-子曰：君子成，人之美；不成，人之恶。小人反是

Confucius said: The gentleman completes the good in others; if not, the bad in others. The petty person does the opposite.

Yang Bojun: Confucius said: “The gentleman completes others’ good deeds, not encouraging their bad deeds. The petty person, however, is the opposite.”

Qian Mu: The master said: “The gentleman helps to accomplish others’ virtues, not their vices. The petty person is exactly the opposite.”

Li Zehou: Confucius said: “The gentleman completes others’ good deeds, not helping others to do bad. The petty person is the opposite.”

Detailed explanation:

The first and third interpretations focus on “good deeds, bad deeds,” which is a complete misinterpretation because they fundamentally do not understand that in the Analects, the pairing of “beauty, evil” has a specific meaning. As for whether Mr. Qian is aware of this, since his explanation does not specify, it is worth exploring. The original common division of the sentence is incorrect; the correct division is: “The gentleman completes, the good in others; does not complete, the evil in others. The petty person, the opposite.”

Later in the Analects, there is a passage: Zizhang asked Confucius: “What about this, can one then govern?” Confucius said: “Respect the five virtues, banish the four evils, then one can govern.” That is to say, “beauty, evil” relate to a person’s character; in modern terms, roughly similar to “virtue, vice.” In Confucius’s view, virtue is unified; to speak of virtue is to speak of action, and to speak of action is to speak of virtue. What is virtue? It is “gain.” Confucius emphasized “action must be effective,” there must be something to be gained. But this “gain” is not personal benefit, but the “gain” in character. Note that here, character, broadly speaking, can relate to family, country, and the world. People have their virtues; the world also has its virtues. In Confucius’s eyes, this virtue is not without distinction of “beauty and evil,” but clearly divided into “beauty and evil.”

Here, “之” is not a structural particle but its original meaning, a verb. In ancient pictographs, it symbolizes the continuous growth of trees and branches, extended to mean “to produce, to grow.”

The common incorrect division: “The gentleman completes the good in others, not the evil in others. The petty person, the opposite,” treats “people” as others, dividing the gentleman and others into two categories, as if the gentleman has a special magic power to achieve others’ “beauty and evil”; the same logic is applied to petty persons. In fact, this chapter explores how to become a gentleman or a petty person; the “people” here is a general term.

Gentlemen and petty persons are both kinds of “virtue,” which are dynamic, not static, and are not something like a diploma. The original sentence is inverted; the corresponding sentence is equivalent to: “People’s good, and the gentleman completes; people’s evil, and the gentleman does not complete. The petty person, the opposite.”

People, inherently, are neither gentleman nor petty person; this is not innate but acquired through “sight, hearing, learning, and practice.” People continuously cultivate virtues and eliminate vices; thus, they can become gentlemen; otherwise, they become petty persons. This aligns with Confucius’s idea that everyone can be Yao and Shun; everyone is equal, and what they ultimately become depends on whether they focus on “beauty” or “evil.”

Because of this, self-cultivation is necessary, and everything is self-sufficient, without needing to seek external divine power. Because all external forces cannot replace your own “之”; your growth can only be your own growth, your virtue can only be your own virtue, and no deity can substitute for it. Confucius never believed in the boring lies that salvation by a so-called god can grant eternal life; he only believed in his own strength. Everything arises from each individual’s own effort, which is also the logic of China’s ancient tradition of “self-improvement and perseverance.”

Plain translation of Chan Zhong’s Zen talk.