Mind Your Own Business

The Passages

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8.14

14.26

Confucius says not to plan the business of a post you don't hold. Zengzi goes further: the exemplary person does not even think beyond his own. 8.14 records the first sentence alone, and 14.26 records both. Zengzi's line also appears, with one extra particle, in the Book of Changes, under the hexagram of a pair of mountains at rest.

Philosophical Discussion

A rule in two strengths

Confucius forbids 謀, planning and directing, outside your post. Zengzi narrows the limit to 思, your concerns themselves. Read flatly, the second sentence would rule out half the advice of a modern career workshop, which tells you to act as though you already have the promotion.

The earliest commentators read it flatly. 孔安國 says only that the Master wanted each man devoted wholly to his own office. 皇侃 adds that thinking beyond your portion is wasted effort. 宦懋庸's 論語稽, from the late Qing, says meddling helps nothing and invites disaster, and points to the factional purges of the Han, Tang, Song and Ming. Mencius (5B.5) calls it a crime to hold a low post and speak of lofty matters: 位卑而言高，罪也.

Room inside the rule

The first room is in the word 謀 (see Episode 21). The Ming scholar 林希元 says it means planning with intent to carry out. A scholar living in obscurity who thinks about the empire, or a commoner who talks about the issues of the day, has not left his position. You may think about your superior's decisions and discuss them. You may not make them.

The second room is in exceptions. 程頤, quoted in 朱熹's commentary, allows you to answer when a ruler or a minister asks. 張栻 says that when someone comes to you for a plan, there are times you may give one.

The Jin-dynasty critic 王若虛 accepts neither exception, because the text contains neither, and he thinks there are times to speak even when no one asks. He takes the saying as occasioned: perhaps officials of the day were encroaching on one another's duties, or perhaps Confucius, unable to find a ruler who would employ him, was explaining why he stayed out. Which, he says, cannot be known; either way it is not a settled rule. Both 張栻 and 王若虛 reach us through 陳天祥's 四書辨疑, a Yuan work, which judges 王若虛's view final.

What Confucius actually did

焦袁熹's 此木軒四書說 checks the rule against the Master's practice. Asked by Duke Ai how to win the people (2.19), he said to raise the upright over the crooked, and named no minister to raise and nothing about the 三桓, the three families who ran Lu. Asked by Duke Jing of Qi about government (12.11), he said to let the ruler be a ruler and the minister a minister, and said nothing about the 陳 clan who would take Qi. He gave principles, not orders.

14.21 shows him working the boundary. When 陳成子 killed Duke Jian of Qi in 481 BCE, Confucius, long retired, bathed, went to court and asked Duke Ai to send an army. Sent on to the three families, he went knowing they would refuse, and explained himself both times: 以吾從大夫之後，不敢不告也, "since I follow behind the grandees, I did not dare not to report it." He argued that speaking up was his position.

A focus, not a wall

The episode's preferred reading comes from the Qing 筤墅說書. Limiting thought to your position is not a wall against everything outside it but a way to concentrate. The principle of handling one affair well is the principle of handling ten thousand. Whoever does not think through what his own post requires will fail the same way when moved to another. The sage, it says, teaches you to start from right under your own heels: 從腳跟下做起.

Mencius gives the model in the same passage (5B.5). As a storehouse keeper, Confucius said all he had to do was keep the accounts correct; in charge of the herds, all he had to do was keep the cattle and sheep sleek and growing. In the same breath Mencius says that to stand in a ruler's court and not make the Way prevail is a disgrace: 立乎人之本朝，而道不行，恥也. The rule limits how far you reach and raises the bar for everything inside your lane.

Context and Connections

Two speakers, not a dialogue

Most passages with two speakers record a conversation. 14.26 records a saying and a gloss: Zengzi, a disciple, restates his teacher. 8.14 is the same first sentence, recorded on its own.

Zengzi

曾子, personal name 曾參, was 46 years younger than Confucius by the Shiji's count, and the second of his family to study with him: his father 曾點 appears in 11.26. Tradition makes him the teacher of 子思, Confucius's grandson, whose disciples taught Mencius, the main line of later Confucianism. His own disciples very likely helped compile the Analects, which calls him by the title 子 and records his deathbed words to them in 8.3.

The Analects and the Book of Changes

The Analects quotes the 易經 once: 13.22 cites a line statement of hexagram 32, 恆, "Constancy." In 7.17 Confucius says that with a few more years he would study at fifty, 學易, and be free of great faults. The 史記 adds that he read the book until its leather bindings broke three times, 韋編三絕, and credits him with ordering several of its commentaries, the root of the tradition that he wrote all ten. But 陸德明's 經典釋文 records that the Lu version of the Analects read 亦, "also," for 易: he would study at fifty and also be free of great faults, and the Changes are not in the passage at all.

The hexagram 艮

Each of the 64 hexagrams stacks six lines, solid or broken, read from the bottom, and each splits into two trigrams; eight trigrams give eight times eight hexagrams. The oldest layer, the 周易, gives each hexagram a judgement (卦辭) and each line a statement, and tradition credits it to King Wen and the Duke of Zhou. Commentaries accumulated for centuries, the latest probably Han. Ten of them, the 十翼 or Ten Wings, were long attributed to Confucius, a claim most modern scholars reject. The oldest surviving manuscript, a Warring States bamboo copy in the Shanghai Museum, has the core text and none of the commentaries.

One wing, the Greater Images (大象), takes each hexagram's two trigrams as an image and draws a lesson from it for the 君子. Hexagram 52, 艮, "being at rest," doubles the mountain trigram, broken, broken, solid, and its Greater Image is Zengzi's sentence with one more particle:

兼山，艮；君子以思不出其位。 A pair of mountains: being at rest. Thus the exemplary person's concerns do not go beyond his position.

The 以 ties the lesson back to the image. Whether Zengzi quoted the commentary, as tradition holds, or the commentary borrowed from Zengzi, or both drew on an older saying, the episode leaves open, noting only that the commentaries' moral vocabulary looks later than Confucius.

The judgement itself is obscure: 艮其背，不獲其身；行其庭，不見其人，无咎, "rest the back and lose awareness of the body; walk in the courtyard and see no one; no fault." The Commentary on the Judgement (彖傳) glosses 艮 as 止, resting, and adds 時止則止，時行則行, rest when it is time to rest, move when it is time to move. Upper and lower trigrams answer each other without meeting: 上下敵應，不相與也. The image the episode keeps is the pair of mountains, each in full view of the other, neither ever taking the other's place.

Who's who

• 曾子 — 曾參, the disciple 46 years Confucius's junior; called Master in the Analects
• 曾點 — Zengzi's father, also a disciple (11.26)
• 子思 — Confucius's grandson, taught by Zengzi in the traditional lineage
• 文王 and 周公 — King Wen, founder of the 周 house, and his son the Duke of Zhou, to whom tradition credits the core 周易
• 孔安國 — Western Han scholar whose notes are preserved in the 集解
• 皇侃 — 488–545, author of the subcommentary on the 集解
• 林希元 — 1481–1565, Ming scholar, author of the 四書存疑
• 程頤 — 1033–1107, Northern Song philosopher, quoted in 朱熹's commentary
• 張栻 — 1133–1180, Southern Song scholar and friend of 朱熹
• 王若虛 — 1174–1243, scholar-official of the Jurchen Jin, a sceptical reader of the classics
• 陳天祥 — Yuan scholar whose 四書辨疑 preserves 張栻 and 王若虛 here
• 焦袁熹 — 1661–1736, Qing scholar, author of the 此木軒四書說
• 宦懋庸 — 1842–1892, Qing scholar, author of the 論語稽
• 魯哀公 — Duke Ai of Lu, r. 494–468 BCE; 齊景公 — Duke Jing of Qi, r. 547–490 BCE
• 陳成子 — 陳恆 of 齊, who killed his ruler 齊簡公 (Duke Jian) in 481 BCE
• 金安平 — Annping Chin, translator of the Analects (2014), whose gloss on 8.14 is "Don't stick your nose into other people's business"

Related passages

• 8.3 — Zengzi's words to his disciples from his deathbed
• 11.26 — Zengzi's father 曾點 among the disciples
• 7.17 — studying the Changes at fifty, or studying and also being free of faults
• 13.22 — the one quotation of the Changes in the Analects
• 15.40 — 謀, planning together, in Episode 21
• 2.19, 12.11 — principles, not orders, for Duke Ai and Duke Jing
• 14.21 — the retired Confucius asks for an army against Qi

Language Notes

8.14, 14.26 — 子曰：「不在其位，不謀其政。」

Not — be in — its — position; not — plan — its — policies.

• 其 — the possessive "its," with the "it" never named: whatever post is in question. English has to say "the position" and "its policies."
• 位 — a position, here an office. Modern Mandarin keeps it in 地位, status, and 座位, a seat.
• 謀 — to plan, to deliberate toward acting; the word of 15.40 and Episode 21.
• 政 — government, its policies. Still everywhere: 政府, government; 政策, policy.
• The two parallel 不…其 clauses carry no "if"; English has to supply the condition.

14.26 — 曾子曰：「君子思不出其位。」

The exemplary person — concerns — not — leave — his — position.

• 思 — most literally thoughts; here "concerns." Modern 思考, to think, and 意思, meaning.
• 其 — now the ordinary possessive, since the sentence names its subject, the 君子.
• 思不出 — not a potential complement like modern 想不出, "can't think of": that construction appears only after the Han.