translation

[raoulzakil]

Can anybody  translate this:夫以父立政,不孝也

Thank you.

[lips]

Straight from Google:

 

若以惩治父亲来树立政绩,这是不孝;

[somethingfunny]

This is a quote taken from the 史记 and the exact passage within which it appears has been discussed on these forums twice before: here and here.

 

I'm not saying you'll get an exact translation there (lips has already covered that for you) but you might get some additional information which may be of use.

[Shelley]

I have a question sort of related to this topic, it was prompted by this topic.

If someone asks for a translation, do they not want it in English?

 

I was confused by lips reply.

Sorry for the weird question.

[lips]

I was not answering the OP question, I was just trolling!

 

Seriously, I thought it'd be a better learning experience to read the meaning of the classical Chinese sentence in modern Chinese. 

[Shelley]

Ah ok not sure what to think of that

[somethingfunny]

As the original was given in Classical Chinese it could be assumed that a translation into modern Chinese would be sufficient.  An English translation wouldn't really make much sense without any context - the modern Chinese translation doesn't either to be honest.  I'll have to check my copy of Fuller when I get back, but I believe the English meaning here is roughly "To bring the rule of law on one's father is not filial".  The issue in the text is that if one's father commits a crime and its up to you to enforce the punishment then you are presented with the choice of either 1. Punishing your father, therefore violating the fundamental Confucian principle of filial piety or 2. Not fulfilling your role as an employee of the government, therefore violating other fundamental Confucian principles.  I'm not a philosopher, or an expert of Confucianism, but I understand the problem here to be one with how to correctly fill our designated roles.  

 

It's been a while since I read this passage so it'll be interesting to check it later to see what I wrote about it.

[Shelley]

@somethingfunny Thank you, I had suspected that was what was going on but felt i needed to check.

[lips]

I think just the sentence by itself makes a lot of sense even without the context/background information.

 

BTW the modern Chinese translation I quoted above is a little bit different from Fuller's, in that the latter does not carry the meaning of " 树立政绩 ".

[Publius]

OK here's the fuller context:

石奢者，楚昭王相也。堅直廉正，無所阿避。行縣，道有殺人者，相追之，乃其父也。縱其父而還自繫焉。使人言之王曰：「殺人者，臣之父也。夫以父立政，不孝也；廢法縱罪，非忠也；臣罪當死。」王曰：「追而不及，不當伏罪，子其治事矣。」石奢曰：「不私其父，非孝子也；不奉主法，非忠臣也。王赦其罪，上惠也；伏誅而死，臣職也。」遂不受令，自刎而死。

I agree with Fuller's interpretation that 政 means "rule of law." 立政 in today's parlance is more like 树立法律的威严.

 

[somethingfunny]

I think the context is important as 夫以父立政，不孝也 is only half of a parallel phrase:

 

夫以父立政，不孝也

廢法縱罪，非忠也

 

The point isn't necessarily just about using the force of law against ones father not being filial, but is also about the difficulty of conflicting duties.  I think it's pretty obvious that harming one's own father would be considered unfilial, but what happens when this conflicts with the need to be loyal to the ruler and punish crimes?  As we can see, in the end even though he chose the 'filial' path of not arresting and punishing his own father, the guilt of not being loyal drove him to suicide...