“Complete Trust in the Book Is Worse Than Having No Book”

“Complete Trust in the Book Is Worse Than Having No Book”

“Complete trust in the Book is worse than having no Book.” The line comes from Mencius, Jin Xin II. Here “the Book” specifically means the Book of Documents. Mencius says he accepts only a few passages from its “Wu Cheng” chapter because its description of blood flowing so deeply after a righteous conquest seems implausible to him.

The point is not that books are generally untrustworthy. It is that even an authoritative text must remain open to judgement about what makes sense in context. Respect for a source does not require surrendering one’s capacity to assess it.

https://ctext.org/text.pl?if=en&node=1843&remap=gb&show=parallel


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