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。」
3 responses so far ↓
1 Charles Frith // Jun 14, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I’d never thought about it as priorities but more as ideals. But I like the idea that ideals have priorities. Like everything else.
2 Phil // Jun 16, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I just love classical Chinese. Can you imagine Zigong just turning up to class one day, plonking himself down on the floor, and saying one word: “Zheng?” (or whatever the pronunciation was in Old Chinese).
To be honest, though, it seems like a bit of a misreading to say Franklin was prioritizing. Franklin doesn’t seem to think that “temporary safety” is a goal at all. All he’s saying here is that if you give up your principles, you’re a bad type. And Confucius would be with him all the way on that, though they’d disagree on what the principles are.
3 Jeremiah // Jun 16, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Phil,
Good point. The driving idea behind this post was a tendency in the PRC to think in terms of ‘priorities’ rather than ‘principles.’ Perhaps I should have made the distinction clearer. Thanks for stopping by.
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