Confucius and his times

The Master said, “I have not been able to see a sage. It will be enough to see a gentleman.” (VII/26)

The word junzi, meaning literally prince-child and usually translated “gentleman,” represents the attainable ideal of moral selfhood for Confucius. There are higher states, such as the sheng “sage,” but at least for Confucius, these are not considered within reach except for a handful of exceptionally endowed individuals from the legendary past.

Confucius did not coin the term junzi. It was in use before him. However, it seems to have been he who appropriated it, changing it along lines eerily similar to the evolution its English counterpart underwent over a much longer period.

Junzi is used in pre-Confucian texts such as the Canon of Poetry. There it means more or less what it literally signifies, a scion of the nobility. It is even used at least once of a woman, a royal wife (Poetry I/I/4). But in early texts, it always signifies a position one has attained by birth or family connection.

Confucius changed junzi to something any man could become if devoted to scholarship and morality. We should note that as in other historical situations where “the career open to talents” supplants rank according to birth, the position of women declines, partly because the study needed to attain position is considered man’s work.

Confucius never claimed the title of junzi himself; his disciples, naturally, insisted he deserved it (XIV/28).