The Analects

What does it take to become fully human, not merely well-behaved? The Analects returns endlessly to ren, the humaneness that shows in how a person treats others.

At the centre stands ren, humaneness or fellow-feeling, which Confucius will not define once and for all but shows differently to each student who asks, because what it demands depends on who is asking. It is close by: want to be humane, and you are already near it. Around ren gather the junzi's other marks, integrity, sincerity, doing right for its own sake rather than for advantage, and a lifelong labour of self-cultivation and study, since learning without reflection is wasted and reflection without learning is perilous. The exemplary person does the right thing when no one rewards it, and measures themselves before measuring others.

• virtue
• character
• integrity
• sincerity
• humility
• righteousness
• self-cultivation
• learning
• education

Are manners and ceremony mere etiquette, or the very medium in which goodness becomes real? For Confucius, li is how an inner virtue takes an outward shape a person can actually live.

Li, the rites, manners and forms of conduct handed down, is the vessel that carries ren into daily life. Confucius insists the form is empty without the feeling, ritual without reverence is nothing, yet also that feeling untutored by form runs to excess. Filial devotion to parents is the root from which wider humaneness grows, and mourning, music and the small courtesies of address all shape the heart that performs them. He claimed only to transmit the ways of the ancients, not to invent, holding that a person is finished by ritual as much as steadied by it, the outward practice slowly forming the inward character.

• propriety
• ritual
• tradition
• aesthetics
• filial piety
• political ethics
• moral character

Can a state be ordered by the character of those who govern rather than by punishment and law? Confucius stakes political order on the moral example set at the top.

Rule by virtue, Confucius argues, and the people will be drawn as the stars turn toward the pole; rule by law and punishment, and they will evade the penalty without shame. Government begins in the ruler's own conduct: set yourself right and the state follows, for the grass bends when the wind passes over it. Central is the rectification of names, that a ruler act as a ruler should, a father as a father, so that word and role no longer come apart. The exemplary official serves the good, not advancement, and withdraws rather than lend himself to a corrupt court. Order is moral before it is administrative.

• governance
• leadership
• public service
• political philosophy
• responsibility
• moral education
• justice