“井有仁”的道德意蕴——宰我“井有仁”之问发微

The Ethical Meanings of 'There is a man in the well' in The Analects of Confucius

《论语》宰我问"井有仁"一章,向来被注释者作为宰我德行不足的标志,认为他对仁德的信心不足,所以才会提出这样的问题。但通过疏解问答本身可以发现,孔子对于问题的转换,并没有直接否定宰我的问题本身,而是试图用一种行为方式的选择去消弭宰我所提的问题。由此分析可以看出,宰我的问题本身并非没有意义,而是试图用一种极端的情境表达现实行为动机的复杂性,表现出人性内在挣扎对于行为的真实影响。无论在理论上还是现实中,宰我的问题都仍然颇具思考意义。

The chapter of ＂There is a man in the well＂ in The A nalects of Confucius was always considered as an expression of Zai Wo＇s inadequacy in virtue. Traditional commentators thought that he asked this question for he had no confidence in the virtue of ten （meaning kindness）. However, only by referring back to the text can we find that Confucius didn＇t deny Zai Wo＇s question, but made a transformation, which tried to remove this dilemma with a choice of behavioral approaches. That is to say, the problem of Zai Wo is not meaningless, in the contrary, he wanted to provide an extreme situation to explore the complexity of one＇s motives in real life, which is still worthy of reflection both in theory and in practice