Cheng Yi

The next bit of room comes from exceptions.

Cheng Yi, the Song philosopher we heard from last episode, says that if a ruler or a high official asks for your input, you can give it.

His fellow Song scholar, Zhang Shi, adds that if someone comes to you for a plan, there are times you can share one.

In other words, no unsolicited takeovers, but when you're asked, answer.

commitment is what you owe a ruler, credibility is what you owe a friend.

A reading that goes back to the disciple Zongzi's daily self-examination in 1.4. Cheng Yi splits them differently, calling them the root that everything else rests on, with commitment measured inside yourself and credibility out to the world.

And one 12th century commentator, Wang Ruoxu, said that the list doesn't divide very evenly at all.

Commitment and credibility are just two kinds of conduct, so why list them separately? His conclusion was actually pretty striking for a Confucian scholar.

Teaching means clamping and shaping, so you start with the texts and the rules.

The ordering we find in 7.25 aligns with Xunzi's philosophical claim, text first, conduct next, and the inner qualities last.

Cheng Yi's decision to call commitment and credibility the root is Mencius' ordering, applied to a passage that reads the other way around.

So when we read the commentators arguing over whether or not the four characters are in the right order, what we're really reading is an argument about human nature.