Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
Abstract: The current mainstream opinion holds that “You jiao wu lei” refers to the non-discriminatory nature of the objects of education, but the interpretations over the long millennium of antiquity, by contrast, placed emphasis on the non-discriminatory nature of educational outcomes and indicated the educational aim implied behind “You jiao wu lei.” The semantic-syntactic characteristics of “You jiao wu lei,” as well as the perfective usage in Old Chinese whereby the character “you” as a possessive verb marks the perfect aspect, both support the latter view. “You jiao wu lei” is the projection, at the level of education, of the Confucian idea of “stopping at the utmost good”; it is Confucius’ ideal of an ultimate educational aim, highly compatible with his entire system of thought, with far-reaching influence. Today’s ideal of quality-oriented education is in the same lineage.
Keywords: you jiao wu lei; semantic-syntax; Confucian thought; stopping at the utmost good
Introduction
Confucius is one of the greatest educators in our country’s history. Regarding Confucius’ educational thought, besides “teaching in accordance with the student’s aptitude,” the most influential and representative is none other than “You jiao wu lei.” As an important component of Confucius’ educational thought, “You jiao wu lei” is highly general. “You jiao wu lei” comes from The Analects • “Wei Linggong.” Because there is no surrounding context to refer to and it is just a lone sentence, there is currently no unified view on the interpretation of this sentence; to some extent, it has even become a historical unresolved case. Even so, given the important position of “You jiao wu lei” in Confucius’ educational thought, the significance of adjudicating this “historical unresolved case” should not be underestimated.
Simply put, there are currently roughly two interpretations of “You jiao wu lei”: the first, in terms of the objects of education, emphasizes the breadth and equality of the educational audience (equality), that is, everyone can receive education without distinction; the second, in terms of the goals of education, emphasizes the effectiveness and convergence of educational results (assimilation), that is, people who have received education can achieve a certain degree of being without distinction. Starting from the first interpretation, this paper focuses on exploring the second interpretation, thereby offering the author’s re-exploration.
I The first interpretation of “You jiao wu lei”
Interpreting “You jiao wu lei” from the perspective of the objects of education is the mainstream thinking in today’s society. Not to mention the teaching materials of primary, secondary, and higher education, the publicity of official and non-official media, the citations in general literature, and ordinary people’s understanding— even in academia there are few dissenting voices. For example, among the major translated editions of The Analects, Yang Bojun translates it as “I educate everyone, without [differences of wealth, region, and so on]”; Nan Huaijin translates it as “regardless of class, regardless of region, regardless of intelligence or stupidity—so long as they are willing to be taught… I uniformly instruct them earnestly”; Fu Peirong translates it as “In teaching, I treat everyone the same and will not distinguish categories of students”; Jin Liangnian translates it as “In carrying out education there is no distinction of objects”… Nan Huaijin even believes that this “does not need explanation.” From this one can almost conclude that the current mainstream reading of “You jiao wu lei” can be regarded as a kind of social ideology. To call it ideology, an even more important marker is the statement of the highest official leadership. Taking the mainland as an example: in August 1958, Mao Zedong spoke of “there being a people’s nature aspect in the history of Chinese education,” in which “Confucius’ you jiao wu lei” was conspicuously listed, and ranked first.
Linking this to the developmental thread of modern Chinese history, it is not hard to reach the conclusion that the “you jiao wu lei” interpreted from the perspective of educational objects and emphasizing “people’s nature” is very likely merely another miniature of modern China’s “using antiquity to reform institutions” in its pursuit of democracy, fitting well with the social psychology of “making the past serve the present.” But in terms of the spirit of seeking historical truth, whether this “repetition of error becomes accepted as truth,” or Nan Huaijin’s “does not need explanation,” is far from enough, and is far from Confucius’ own scholarly and pedagogical admonitions of “see much and set aside what is doubtful” and “hear much and set aside what is doubtful.” The connotation of the spirit of seeking historical truth lies in that it is forever questioning—not only “having doubts where there are doubts,” but also “having doubts where there seem to be no doubts”; only, this questioning must be carried out through a strict, trained, and norm-conforming method of argumentation to comb through and pick out, and to illuminate the subtle and hidden. This is the standpoint of this paper. However, given that the above interpretation of “You jiao wu lei” leaves little room for further explanation, the following proceeds from the opposite stance, proposing and demonstrating the possibility of another interpretation, thereby achieving a comprehensive analysis of “You jiao wu lei.”
II The second interpretation of “You jiao wu lei”
In sharp contrast to the first interpretation of “You jiao wu lei” prevalent in contemporary times, the major ancient commentary editions of The Analects all directly or indirectly advocate the second interpretation. For example, in Cheng Shude’s Collected Exegesis of the Analects regarding the interpretation of “You jiao wu lei”:
[Textual Variants] In the Han Shu “Treatise on Geography,” “wu” is cited as “wang.”
[Textual Verification] Lüshi Chunqiu “Encouraging Learning”: Therefore, the teacher’s teaching does not contend over light and heavy, noble and base, poor and rich, but contends in the Way. If the person is acceptable, then there is nothing in the matter that is unacceptable.
[Collected Explanations] Ma says (author’s note: Ma Rong): It means that wherever people are and see instruction, there are no categories.
[Ancient Notes before the Tang] The Huang commentary (author’s note: see Huang Kan’s Analects: Exegesis of Meaning) cites Miao Bo as saying: The world all knows the loftiness of this aim of revering teaching, yet does not believe how truly profound this principle is. The myriad living kinds all receive the same ultimate source; though the lowest foolish are unchanging, yet what transformation can shift is ten thousand times that. If born and hearing the Way, growing up and seeing instruction, placed in the Way of benevolence, nurtured with virtue, beginning and ending with the Way, then those who are not of the Way—this is what I cannot discuss.
[Collected Commentary] (author’s note: see Zhu Xi’s Collected Commentaries on Chapters and Sentences of the Four Books) Human nature is all good, and the differences of good and evil in its kinds are due to the staining of habitual qi. Therefore, if the gentleman provides teaching, then people can all return to the good, and one should not again discuss the evil of their kind.
From this it can be seen that from Ban Gu to Zhu Xi, the major ancient commentary editions of The Analects almost all understand “You jiao wu lei” as: through education, people can “lose categories,” “have no categories,” “beginning and ending with the Way,” and “return to the good,” with no “evil of their kind.” Although the premises or presuppositions of these understandings are not identical—some say “if the person is acceptable,” some “wherever [they] see instruction,” some “the myriad living kinds all receive the same ultimate source,” some “human nature is all good”—this does not prevent them from converging by different routes, in an abstract sense, on a consistent conclusion, namely: through education, people can be guided to a certain considerable state, and thus there will no longer be so-called differences of category. The only one that appears relatively close to today’s first interpretation is the explanation in Lüshi Chunqiu, but its interpretive focus is clearly on “if the person is acceptable, then there is nothing in the matter that is unacceptable,” which means that in essence it still belongs to the second interpretation and should not be conflated. The late-Qing philologist Dai Wang’s interpretation is also similar: “In teaching people one does not rely on clan categories, only on their worthiness.” It seems akin to the first interpretation, but in fact it is in the same line as the second. The best evidence is Dai Wang’s subsequent quotation from Xunzi • “Royal Institutions”: “In antiquity, if the descendants of kings and dukes could not be affiliated with ritual and righteousness, then they were returned among the common people. Even if [one is] the grandson of common people, if one accumulates learning and letters, rectifies one’s person and conduct, and can be affiliated with ritual and righteousness, then one is returned to the ranks of ministers and great officers.” That is to say, in Dai Wang’s view, education can promote social class mobility and provide common people with a fair opportunity to reach the path to ministers and great officers; ultimately, it still looks at educational effects. Here, rather than saying that the first and second interpretations of “You jiao wu lei” possess some ambiguity, it is better to say that this ambiguity is an appearance produced by the perceptual relationship between these two interpretations. Just as the Qing scholar Jian Chaoliang pointed out, “Teaching has no noble or base—how could it need saying?” In other words, when Lüshi Chunqiu and Dai Wang interpret “You jiao wu lei,” both take as a psychological presupposition that “everyone can receive education without distinction”; their fundamental purport is still to emphasize the effects of education.
After Zhu Xi, the Collected Commentaries on Chapters and Sentences of the Four Books became the official textbook, and the second interpretation of “You jiao wu lei” naturally rose to become the strict “standard answer” in the imperial examinations and the mainstream thought of society. Deng Qiubai’s General Explanations of the Analects attaches under the entry “You jiao wu lei” later views by Hu Guang, Qingyuan Fuzhang, the Hong clan, and other scholars, which can serve as evidence. The best example in this regard is Gu Hongming’s English translation of The Analects in the late Qing and early Republic: “Among really educated men，there is no caste or race-distinction。” (Among truly educated people, there is no social rank or racial distinction.) Hu Shi, who had drunk Western ink and advocated American-style democracy, gave a 1947 speech that echoes this from afar: “You jiao wu lei, ‘lei’ means categories, classes, nations; ‘you jiao wu lei’ means: ‘With education, there are no classes or nations.’”
The purpose of this paper is not in pointless textual criticism or the piling up of different claims, but at this point in the writing, it can basically be affirmed: that the second interpretation of “You jiao wu lei” was mainstream for a long period in the past is absolutely beyond doubt.
III “You jiao wu lei” in semantic-syntax
The divergence in interpreting “You jiao wu lei” is determined by its own semantic-syntactic characteristics.
Yuan Zhihong’s interpretation is quite novel and differs from the two major interpretations above. He believes that the “lei” in “You jiao wu lei” means “good” (see Erya), and that “wu lei” is similar to what Wang Guowei called “ancient idioms,” a fixed collocation, so the whole sentence should be explained as “although there are teachings and commands, there is no good virtue,” or “there is teaching but no goodness.” He further points out that the ideological implication behind this interpretation is in fact of a piece with the Guoyu statement “if teaching is not good then governance is not in order,” fitting well with the Confucian school’s political lament in the transitional period when rites collapsed and music decayed. But Yuan Hongzhi’s interpretation is too heavily subjective; saying that “wu lei” is a fixed collocation is even harder to establish, and Zhang Songhui has a good rebuttal of this.
From syntactic structure, Xie Zhibin believes that in Classical Chinese the contracted complex sentence “you X wu X” has two kinds of structural relations: one is a coordinate relation, such as “you chong wu ren” and “you ren wu zhu” (Shiji • “House of Chu”); the other is a conditional relation, such as “you bei wu huan” and “you li wu bai” (Zuo Zhuan • “Duke Xiang, Year 11”). He holds that the “lei” in “you jiao wu lei” refers to kinds of human intelligence, i.e., the differences between wise and foolish, worthy and unworthy, and these differences can be transformed; the condition for transformation is “jiao” (teaching), so “you jiao wu lei” should in fact be a contraction of “you jiao ze wu lei,” conforming to the second sentence type. Yi Zhongtian goes further and summarizes four main sentence patterns of “you X wu X”:
1. Only a, no b, e.g., you yong wu mou, you ming wu shi; 2. Have a, no non-a (b), e.g., you zeng wu jian, you guo zhi wu bu ji; 3. Both have a and do not have a, e.g., you yi wu yi, you yi da mei yi da; 4. If there is a, then there is no b, e.g., you bei wu huan, you shi wu kong.
Like Xie Zhibin, Yi Zhongtian does not more deeply refute why other possible sentence patterns cannot stand; he merely, on the grounds of Confucius’ ideological orientation, concludes that “you jiao wu lei” is a shorthand for “you jiao ze wu lei.” But judging from the four patterns he summarizes, the remaining three non-options can be excluded through construction rules (construction): because “you jiao wu lei” in sentence construction is nothing more than two possibilities, “you V (verb) wu N (noun)” and “you N1 wu N2.” This first negates the possibility of pattern 2 (you V1 mei V2); and in the second possible construction, the semantic relationship between N1 and N2—namely “jiao” and “lei”—cannot correspond to the nominal components of Yi Zhongtian’s patterns 1 and 3, so “you jiao wu lei” can and only can be pattern 4’s “you jiao ze wu lei.” From this, looking back at Xie Zhibin’s so-called coordinate relation, explaining “you jiao wu lei” as “you jiao er wu lei” (there is an opportunity to be taught or to teach, yet there is no corresponding category), is semantically in fact also awkward and incoherent.
Research results in linguistic typology and the history of grammaticalization in Chinese can provide a more profound explanatory perspective on this issue. Shi Yuzhi points out that marking the perfect aspect with possessive verbs is a common usage in human language and has considerable cognitive motivation. This usage is not only found in foreign languages such as English, French, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, etc., but is also frequently seen in Old Chinese and some modern dialects (such as Hakka, Min dialects, Cantonese, etc.), and even in standard Mandarin there are residual examples. For example, in English “I have eaten dinner,” in Min and Cantonese “wo you chi fan,” and in modern Chinese “mou mou you yan,” “you shi XX (face, respect, and the like),” etc., all belong to the usage of adding a “you” before verb V to mark the perfect aspect. This usage was quite common in Old Chinese. For example, in oracle-bone inscriptions, the common “ri yue you (you) shi” and “yue you (you) shi,” in Shuowen Jiezi under the entry “you” in the “you” section “ri yue you shi zhi,” in Shijing • “Didong” “nü zi you xing, yuan fu mu xiong di,” and in Shijing • “Jiming” “zi xing shi ye, xing he you lan,” all are like this. The sentence in Analects • “Gongye Chang,” “Zi Lu you wen, wei neng zhi xing, wei kong you wen,” clearly shows that “you wen” is an action in the general perfect tense and has a temporal semantic relation of prior-to with the later action “xing,” indeed an example of “you + V” marking the perfect aspect. Another example is Analects • “Taibo”: “Weiwei hu qi you chenggong ye! Huan hu qi you wenzhang!” The maturity and splendor of institutions and regulations have a logical temporal relationship with their having been established; the “you” here also conforms to the usage of a possessive verb.
Corresponding interestingly to the “you” character’s possessive-verb usage is the adverbial usage of “mei,” which has been used continuously to the present. In modern Chinese, the “mei” placed before verb V also has a perfective meaning. For example, saying “wo mei chi fan” is the negation of “wo chi le,” which shows that the “mei” in “wo mei chi fan” has considerable grammatical function comparable to the perfective particle “le” in modern Chinese; therefore, their co-occurrence (co-occurence) is redundant, and in fact “wo mei chi fan le” is ungrammatical—modern Chinese “mei” negating verbal components and the perfective particle “le” are mutually exclusive. From the perspective of Chinese grammatical evolution, Shi Yuzhi demonstrates that the modern use of adverbial “mei” first appeared around the 15th century, closely related to the maturation of verb-complement structures and the establishment of the aspect-marking system; in fact, it developed from the negative side of the possessive verb “you.” Shi Yuzhi explains cognitively: “Nouns have only discreteness and no continuity; the most typical feature of verbs is discreteness, while also having continuity.” Thus nouns and verbs “can both be negated by the discrete-quantity negator ‘mei’” (modern Chinese), and can also be affirmed by the discrete-quantity affirmer ‘you’ (Old Chinese), which accords with the analogical effects of language development—only, this analogical effect, due to various constraints, is temporally asymmetric. But as interaction among speech communities has strengthened, the usage of the possessive verb “you” has gradually “revived” in modern Chinese: from initially being limited only to the interrogative pattern “you mei you + V,” it now has a tendency to spread to the general declarative pattern “you + V.” The author has collected many examples of this online, such as: “bu dong wei sha shen bian de ren yi ge yi ge de dou you kan zhe bu ju” “wo you tou guo weixin gongxi ta” “you chi zhongyao,” etc.
In addition, through searching The Analects, the author found that apart from the “jiao” in “you jiao wu lei,” all other instances of “jiao” in The Analects are used as verbs, without exception:
Ju shan er jiao bu neng (Wei Zheng)
Zi yi si jiao (ren) (Shu Er)
Jiao zhi (Zi Lu)
Shan ren jiao min qi nian (same as above)
Yi bu jiao min zhan (same as above)
Bu jiao er sha wei zhi nue (Yao Yue)
This somewhat indicates Confucius’ pragmatic habit or the pragmatic habit of the compilers of The Analects: the “jiao” in “you jiao wu lei” should not be an exception. Therefore, the “you jiao” in “you jiao wu lei” should also belong to the usage of the possessive verb marking the perfect aspect; it should be like Gu Hongming’s English translation “educated,” and should be translated as “have been taught.” What is more, the possessive-verb usage of “you” in The Analects is not an isolated case.
In sum, analyzing “you jiao wu lei” from the semantic-syntactic perspective, it can almost only be the second interpretation; its first interpretation, no matter what, does not belong to any of the situations discussed above.
IV “You jiao wu lei” and Confucian thought
The proposal of “you jiao wu lei” is constrained by the lack of contextual surroundings (context), leading to a diversity of opinions; this highlights the importance of revealing the correlation between “you jiao wu lei” and Confucian thought. In other words, if “you jiao wu lei” is not discussed within the broader background of Confucius’ thought, it can only be self-talk and cannot be complete and self-sufficient.
First, it is necessary to clarify the rough extension (extension) of Confucius’ “lei.” In the author’s view, Confucius’ understanding of differences among people in terms of categories can be divided into four aspects: first, differences in status (noble/base); second, differences in morality (good/evil); third, differences in intelligence (highest wisdom/lowest foolishness); fourth, differences in ethnicity (Yi and Di versus the various Xia). And in Confucius’ view, differences in these four aspects can, to a certain extent, be blurred. For example, differences in status can be blurred through “one who studies well will then serve as an official”; differences in morality can be blurred through learning benevolence and rites; differences in intelligence can be blurred through ways such as “learning and then knowing it” or “being困 and then knowing it”; differences in ethnicity can be blurred through Confucius’ political measures of “achieving results in three years.” In fact, Confucius’ teaching policy of “teaching in accordance with the student’s aptitude” may also be understood as blurring certain categorical differences among people. From this angle, the author does not agree with Yi Zhongtian, Shi Yuzhi, and others who take “wu lei” as “eliminating categorical differences,” because on the one hand that cannot be established in fact, and on the other hand it does not accord with the moderating factor in Confucian thought. Then what is Confucius’ intention in blurring categorical differences among the educated? The author believes that Confucius’ “you jiao wu lei” is merely an ultimate educational ideal of his, whose ultimate goal is to reach the “stopping at the utmost good” pointed out at the very beginning of the Great Learning; this also fits well with the Confucian tendency toward “fixing on the One” and grand unification (“rites, music, punitive expeditions, and military campaigns issue from the Son of Heaven”). The quality-oriented education emphasized in China today has the fundamental intent of pursuing students’ all-around development in all aspects and the overall improvement of comprehensive quality, but it is absolutely not a hard-indicator, factory-style production that erases everyone’s individuality. That is to say, quality-oriented education can also be considered a modern version of “you jiao wu lei,” with traceable origins, reflecting the Chinese people’s common aspiration in education, and not merely an “imported product.” Therefore, the true connotation of “you jiao wu lei” is that people, through education, reach a certain considerable state; people differ in harmony; there are no so-called categorical differences; the whole society is peaceful and stable, a scene of great unity.
Second, Confucius’ words and deeds show that he was not someone who, when teaching, made no distinction among educational objects. Confucius had three thousand disciples, coming from all social strata, but this cannot form a cause-and-effect relationship with Confucius’ motivation to teach. Confucius’ statement “from those who bring even a bundle of dried meat and above, I have never failed to instruct” shows that besides considerations for his own livelihood, he also set thresholds for those receiving instruction: if not economic factors, then at least non-material factors such as willingness to learn and personal qualities. Confucius’ disciples indeed each had their strengths: for example, distinctions among those strong in “virtue, speech, governance, and literature,” and differences such as “Chai is foolish, Shen is dull, Shi is偏, You is粗” (both seen in “Xian Jin”). Rather than saying Confucius did not distinguish educational objects, it is better taken as showing that Confucius had complex standards for teaching. “Natures are close; habits are far apart”—Confucius had a clear understanding of this. Confucius himself was “capable in many things” and “broadly learned,” and to some extent was indeed able to shoulder this difficult teaching challenge. Even so, Confucius’ teaching was not laissez-faire or encouraging individualized development; a series of his actions profoundly reflect this point: such as declaring of Ran Qiu that “he is not my disciple” and encouraging “you little ones, beat the drum and attack him” (“Xian Jin”); cursing Yuan Rang to his face, “Young and not filial and respectful, grown and without accomplishments, old and not dead—this is a robber,” and “knocking his shin with a staff” (“Xian Wen”); scolding Zai Wo in front of other disciples as “rotten wood” and “dung-soil” (“Gongye Chang”); pretending illness to refuse to see Ru Bei and deliberately letting him know he was pretending (“Yang Huo”). Also, Confucius’ strong sense of principle made him not speak of “the strange, feats of strength, disorder, and spirits,” not speak of “nature and Heaven’s mandate,” not speak of “military affairs,” and not learn “the arts of farming and gardening”; these are not behaviors a teacher advocating “treating everyone the same” would have. In the “Xian Jin” chapter’s passage “Zi Lu, Zeng Xi, Ran You, and Gongxi Hua attended while seated,” Confucius’ sigh “I am with Dian” has profound meaning, hinting at Confucius’ pursuit of a certain perfect state; this is in fact also his teaching orientation—moral pursuit and the goal of “one who studies well will then serve as an official,” merely more concrete and subtle.
Finally, it is worth noting that Confucius as a person was both rich in the idealistic coloring of “knowing it cannot be done yet doing it,” and also had the realism of “when employed, act; when set aside, hide.” For example, he pursued the virtue of the Mean all his life, but also soberly opposed the village worthies who are superficially moderate; he even self-contradictorily said: “If we cannot obtain those who follow the middle course and associate with them, we must have the wild and the restrained! The wild are enterprising; the restrained have things they will not do.” Although the “you jiao wu lei” of “stopping at the utmost good” in Confucius’ ideal had era-bound limitations that made it impossible to兑现, this does not prevent him from viewing it as an ultimate educational ideal, just as he regarded the Mean as the supreme virtue.
Conclusion
Starting from the differences between ancient and modern interpretations of “you jiao wu lei,” this paper summarizes and demonstrates the constructional characteristics of the “you X wu X” sentence pattern, draws on the latest achievements of linguistic typology and the history of Chinese grammatical evolution, and searches all instances of the character “jiao” in The Analects, comprehensively analyzing the semantic-syntactic characteristics of “you jiao wu lei.” Finally, it distinguishes the extension and intension of “wu lei,” and holds that the ancient interpretation of “you jiao wu lei” better accords with the basic orientation of Confucian thought. Specifically, “you jiao wu lei” means: through education, people are guided to a certain considerable state, so that there are no so-called categorical differences, thereby reaching a spiritual height of “stopping at the utmost good.” Although this interpretation differs greatly in interest from the currently prevalent interpretation that “everyone can receive education without distinction,” it does not harm Confucius’ historical status as one of the greatest educators in our country’s history. As Confucius’ ultimate educational ideal, “you jiao wu lei” predates today’s ideal of quality-oriented education by more than two thousand years; it can be said that this influence has benefited later generations, with a long source and enduring flow, and has already become a common pursuit in the collective unconscious of the Chinese nation.
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