Analects 2.17: 誨女知之乎

[somethingfunny]

Ah, in that case I guess I should translate it as "Shall I teach you what it is to know it?" Or something similar.

 

Thanks!

[陳德聰]

K but what is that extra "it" referring to in your translation? If you're going that route, you might as well just say "shall I teach you what it is to know?"

[somethingfunny]

OK, then: "Shall I teach you what it is to know a thing (or something)?"

 

I think this is sufficiently different from "Shall I teach you what it is to know?"

 

One is a question about perception and understanding.  Like saying, "What is it to drive a car?", "Well, it's turning corners and applying pressure on the accelerator, it's not about knowing how the internal combustion engine works."

 

While the other would be like asking, "What is a driver?", "Well, that's a person that can move a vehicle from A to B, not someone who get's lost easily."

 

Another comparison would be the difference between "What is it to play football?" and "What is play?"

 

I'm not suggesting I know the differences between these statements, just that there is one.

[Guest realmayo]

First, I don't understand why anyone suggested the OP was wrong for trying to understand how the sentence works grammatically. To what extent those grammatical workings need to be captured in any final translation is of course another matter.

 

Second, I think the OP is right to ask how the translation "shall I teach you what knowledge is" is arrived at. This will be a combination of vocabulary, grammar and context. Or a translator taking liberties/getting it wrong.

 

Third, the OP cannot see how the (i) original Chinese 誨女知之乎 , (ii) the translated version shall I teach you what knowledge is, and (iii) Classical Chinese as he currently understands it to operate can all tally. I'm not sure anyone has solved that for him yet.

 

 

Why not try following translations from other people who generally parse the sentence differently, as basically "know + this" = 知之

 

...where 之 refers to:  誨女

 

and the 乎 is either a 'question mark' or an 'exclamation mark'.

 

So:

 

If you translate 知 as know/remember/keep in mind/understand

And 之 as referring to 誨女

And 誨女 as what I'm teaching you  i.e. what I'm about to teach you

With 乎 as 'exclamation mark'

 

Then it's natural to translate the sentence as;

 

Understand what I'm about to teach you!

Remark well what I'm about to teach you!

Pay close attention to what I'm teaching you!

Keep in mind what I'm going to teach you!

 

Or if you take 乎 as 'question mark' then:

 

Do you know what I have been teaching you?

Do you understand what I've taught you?

 

 

The commentaries direct to Xunzi 29:

 

Part of the relevant passage begins:

孔子曰：「由志之！吾語汝

= Confucius said, “Zilu, pay attention to this. I tell you: ...

 

followed soon by:

故君子知之曰知之，不知曰不知，言之要也

= when a gentleman knows something, he says he knows it, and when he does not know something, he says he does not know it—this is the key point in speaking

 

 

I don't know enough yet about the Confucius material in the Xunzi but of course it came after the Analects, and the writer would have been aware of the text of the Analects, therefore it's reasonable to consider taking the text of the Xunzi to be based on what its writer understood by the text of Analects 2.17.

 

That is, he's writing about the same 'event' as the Analects. And he starts with: "Zilu, pay attention to this" 由志之.

 

[somethingfunny]

Interesting.

 

The 之 somehow nominalizes the 誨女.  This isn't a format I've come across before (not that I can think of anyway), although with Classical Chinese that isn't necessarily a problem.  I quite like this reading, as "What I teach you, understand it!" but I'm not convinced it fits in with the rest of the sentence - in particular, the last 是知也 completes a nice loop back to the original statement, as long as it was posing the question of, essentially, 何为知?  Also, I'd prefer something like 誨女者知之乎 for the reading you suggest.

 

I think, despite my desire to translate the first part as "Shall I teach you what it is to know a thing?", in order to get continuity throughout the whole sentence, it should be understood as:

 

子曰：由！誨女知之乎？ Confucius said: "Let me teach you what is knowledge...

知之為知之                      Take knowing a thing as to know that thing,

不知為不知                      Take not knowing a thing as to not know that thing,

是知也。                         This is knowledge."

 

Note that in the third line the pronoun 之 is not included, but is still implied.  Honestly, if the first line was "何为知也?" I'd have no problem at all.

 

Van Norden provides the following commentary on this issue:

 

"The character 誨 takes both a direct object (the person whom one teachers) and in indirect object (the thing that one teaches to that person).  In this reading, the indirect object of 誨 is 知之.  The phrase 知之 could occur by itself as a complete verbal sentence: "(She) knows it."  But in the reading it is acting as a nominal phrase ("knowing it")."

 

I'd like to add here that I'm an independent learner of Classical Chinese.  My motivation is not to understand the philosophy of The Analects but be able to read Classical Chinese by myself.  Some people might find the questions I pose pedantic or overly-analytical, but please try to understand that it is the discussion of these issues, and not just the final conclusion which is drawn, that helps people improve their ability.

 

_____

 

Edit:  The more I think about it, the more I like:

 

誨女 "What I teach

知之 know it..."

[Guest realmayo]

10 minutes ago, somethingfunny said:

Van Norden provides the following commentary on this issue

 

Where's this from?

[somethingfunny]

Here. (Reading 4)

 

I came across it a while ago and noticed that, unlike a lot of other Classical Chinese notes, it had a lot of material from The Analects.  I've been running through it quickly to get an idea of the language before any more in depth reading.

[陳德聰]

If 之 refers to 誨女, I don't think that necessarily means it is nominalising it, it just means that 誨女 can be taken as a nominalised verb phrase, in order to be the referent of 之.

 

I believe this is called fronting? I have to admit I skipped almost the entire two semesters of Classical Chinese all those years ago. But the whole like

 

Verb+Object -> Object, Verb之

 

emphasis structure seems familiar.

[mouse]

On 25/05/2017 at 11:04 PM, realmayo said:

And he starts with: "Zilu, pay attention to this" 由志之.

 

I think you're right to quote Xunzi on this. Some more info to back up reading 知 as 志:

 

Yu Yue writes, "此知字與下五知字不同。下五知字皆如字，此知字當讀為志". Cheng Shude glosses the first section as, "我今誨女，女其謹志之也”, and after providing some more evidence, concludes, "此文「知之」即「志之」無疑矣". 

[evn108]

On 5/25/2017 at 7:22 AM, somethingfunny said:

You might as well just say "It means this, and now that you know that you no longer need to understand how or why that is, because only meaning is important and nothing else."

I can't believe this has just been sitting here for over a month, on a classical chinese forum, and nobody has made a 得意而忘言 joke yet

 

I'm disappointed

 

also I forgot this forum existed but I remembered it again. Hi!

[BanZhiYun]

"知" here is "志”, it means to memorize. The sentence is as follows:

 

诲女知之乎！
诲 has a 双宾语,结构，the objects are 女 and 知之。

知：通 “志”, 记住，动词。

之：指所说的话。

 

So this sentence means ( I will do it in Chinese, then you can do it in English, as I believe you'd do better :)): "我教导你，你记住它吧！”

This is an explanation from 刘子瑜, professor of Ancient Chinese at the Dept. of Chinese Language and Literature at PKU. 

[BanZhiYun]

I forgot to say, the 知 in the next sentences has a different meaning than this one, as I guess you already know.