Jottings from the Granite Studio

There’s a famous saying, attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Franklin was arguing that there exist higher principles beyond the immediate and that is critical in times of strife not to allow the urgent to vanquish the important.

I’d be hard pressed to find an equivalent quotation from the Chinese canon (and there are likely reasons for that), but this little nugget from Confucius suggests that in the Chinese political tradition there also exists a need for prioritizing basic principles over short-term exigencies:

Analects 12:7 (Wing-tsit Chan translation):

“Tzu-kung asked about government. Confucius said, “Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people.” Tzu-kung said, “Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first?” Confucius said, “I would abandon the armament.” Tzu-kung said, “Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?” Confucius said, “I would abandon food. There have deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people.”

And the original (punctuated) for you fans of Classical Chinese:

子貢問「政」。子曰:「足食,足兵,民信之矣。」子貢曰:「必不得已而去,於斯三者何先?」曰:「去兵。」子貢曰:「必不得已而去,於斯二者何先?」曰:「去食;自古皆有死;民無信不立。」