One of the most striking choices in Erin Cline’s new translation of the Analects is also one of the simplest: she leaves junzi 君子 untranslated. Earlier English translations have often rendered junzi as “gentleman,” “superior man,” or similar expressions. Cline argues that the term need not be understood as gendered and that nothing in the Analects prevents a woman from becoming a junzi. Her larger purpose is to allow us to see more clearly that the Analects sketches a vision of a good life available to everyone. I find this invitation philosophically important. It allows us to move beyond asking what Confucius says about women and to ask a different question: What can women today learn from the Analects about becoming herself in her relationality?
The question begins where the Analects itself begins—with learning, xue 學. Its opening passage famously asks whether it is not a pleasure to learn and repeatedly practice what one has learned. Learning here is more than accumulating knowledge. It is a practice of becoming. We learn, practice, encounter others, reflect on our responses, adjust ourselves, and learn again.
A woman who approaches the Analects as a learner, then, does not need to begin by asking what kind of woman Confucius wants her to be. She can ask instead: What kind of person am I learning to become? The Analects gives an intriguing answer. We become ourselves through relationships. Almost no one in the Analects exists alone. There are parents and children, teachers and students, friends, siblings, rulers and ministers. Even the opening passage moves quickly from learning to relationship: after the pleasure of learning comes the joy of friends arriving from afar. Learning and relationships are intertwined. This suggests something quite different from a familiar modern picture of becoming oneself. We often associate self-realization with independence: discovering who I really am apart from other people’s expectations. The Analects asks us to consider another possibility: Perhaps I do not discover myself by withdrawing from relationships. Perhaps I become myself through learning how to inhabit them. Relationships are complex and difficult. A friend may need encouragement, but may also need correction. A parent deserves respect, but respect does not always mean agreement. A teacher may merit attention, but learning requires thinking rather than imitation. Different relationships call forth different responses.
This is where the Confucian practice of remonstrance, jian 諫, becomes particularly interesting. If someone with whom I have an important relationship is going in the wrong direction, I should not simply obey. Nor must disagreement mean breaking the relationship. I can speak, listen, adjust, and try again. Relationality, then, is not passive dependence. It is an accomplishment. Here another Chinese word can help us: tong 通. Tong means to go through, to open, to communicate, to connect, to become unobstructed. When something is tong, movement remains possible. When it is bu tong 不通, (not tong) something has become blocked: we cannot reach one another. Thinking about tong helps us see an important dimension of Confucian learning. It is not enough simply to know what is right. We must learn how to make our relationships viable. I may be correct and still fail to get through to another person. I may love someone and nevertheless stand too close to see clearly. I may keep so much distance that nothing can pass between us.
The challenge is not simply to choose closeness over distance. It is to discover the distance at which responsiveness becomes possible. This is what I call subtle proximity. Subtle proximity is not simply spatial nearness or farness. It is the changing distance within which people can remain distinct while still affecting, understanding, and transforming one another. Too close, and one person may overwhelm the other. Too distant, and the relationship may cease to communicate. Relational life therefore requires continual adjustment and repositioning. Here Cline’s translation offers an especially provocative example. She renders the notoriously difficult passage 17.25 not as a general statement about women, but as a problem concerning female and male servants: if one is too close, they become insubordinate; if one remains too distant, they become resentful. On Cline’s reading, the passage concerns how to negotiate a relationship involving unequal roles while preserving an appropriate balance of closeness and distance. Whatever one ultimately decides about this difficult passage, Cline’s reading brings into view something that runs throughout the Analects: relationships have distances and positions. Those issues matter.
This insight has particular resonance for women today. Every woman, like every person, becomes herself amid relationships. She actively creates with parents, children, partners, friends, teachers, colleagues, communities, and strangers. The question is how to inhabit and navigate those relationships without disappearing into them. The Analects suggests that this requires learning. I learn when to approach and when to withdraw; when to speak and when to listen; when to accommodate and when to remonstrate. I learn that becoming myself and remaining responsive to others are not opposing poles.
Cline has said that she hopes readers will not simply study the Analects, but learn from it and allow it to influence their everyday lives. Her translation itself can be understood as creating a subtle proximity: between an ancient Chinese text and contemporary readers who approach it with questions Confucius could not have anticipated. For a woman today, one of those questions might be: How can I become more fully myself while remaining deeply relational? The Analects does not provide a finished answer. Perhaps that is precisely its value. It offers practices of learning through which answers must continually be worked out. To become a junzi, on this reading, is to become increasingly capable of learning from one’s relationships without being absorbed by them—to cultivate judgment, responsiveness, and the capacity for tong.
A woman as learner therefore need not ask the Analects to tell her what a woman should be. She can ask it something more open-ended: How shall I continue to become? The answer begins, as the Analects itself begins, with learning. We become ourselves not before or outside our relationships, but through the continual configuration of finding the subtle proximity in which something can still pass between self and other. To learn is to remain open to that passage; to tong is to keep it possible.
