The portrait of the sage in Analects VII
More Stoicising obs on the Confucian classic
8 min readMay 23, 2024
Although each of the twenty books of the Analects is paratactic, a sequence of episodes and sayings by Confucius, his pupils and contemporaries, different books have different foci. Book II was strongly about filial piety; book IV about ren or benevolence. Book VII is almost wholly devoted to a kind of portrait of the…