| Chapter 1: | The Rationale for Reading the Analects Existentially |
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Illness
Illness is an intrinsic human condition that few people escape. Human beings are born with physiological and psychological constitutions that are doomed to decay. The diseases that people contract affect daily life, sometimes changing it drastically. If an illness becomes serious, for example, the normal course of life is disrupted. In the Analects, disease is a cause for concern, and it is a condition in which parents and children are most concerned for each other. The following passage relates the concept of you (
; worry) to illness:
(2:6)
An alternative interpretation of this passage is that one should worry only about the health of one’s parents. Whatever the interpretation, it is clear that health was one of the great concerns for parents and children in Confucius’s time, a concern upon which the core values of filial piety and parental affection are built.
To be sure, the Analects is not a book treating hygiene in the way that a Daoist manual might, but Confucius did not remain silent on the issue of illness. When his disciple Boniu (
) contracted a fatal disease, Confucius lamented that such a man should be stricken with such a disease through destiny (6:10). This lamentation on human illness expresses an angstthat Confucius felt about his own life and the life of his disciples. His limitations as a teacher in the face of fatal disease must have tormented him. Nevertheless, Confucius was able to transcend the circumstances when serious illness afflicted him; Analects 9:12, for instance, records that when Confucius was himself critically ill, he remained calm and refused to violate the ritual propriety engineered by his disciples.
Death
Like illness, death is a human condition that Confucius faced repeatedly throughout his life. Some of his disciples died before Confucius