If you choose one of the most important words in the Analects, which one would you choose?

"Attacking heresy is already harmful" are these eight words. Why do you want to pick these eight words? Because these eight characters are precisely one of the biggest problems we have encountered in interpreting the Analects for more than 2,000 years.

These eight words are just enough to show how difficult it is for us to read the Analects or any ancient Chinese books. Because you find that you seem to be able to read it right, because these ancient books, especially the ancient books of the pre-Qin period, are too concise in their words, and the text is very charming, but the problem is that it is so charming and simplified, but it brings endless possibilities for interpretation.

"Attacking heresy has already caused harm", there are several ways to explain it. If you look up some of the more popular contemporary interpretations of the Analects today, for example, Mr. Yang Bojun, explain these eight words, he will say that if we can attack those heresies and heretical learning, then the harm and harm can be stopped.

What is that fundamental principle? It's that if I'm going to read a sentence, I first have to read every word that makes up that sentence, and that's nonsense, right? But the other way around, how do I read every word in this sentence?

I need to read this sentence first. For example, "I read this sentence first", how do I know what this sentence means? Because I know every word in it.

But the problem is that the original meaning of each word here can be changed in other ways.

That is to say, if I want to know the meaning of individual words in a sentence, I must first know roughly what this sentence is about, so that I can determine the meaning of a certain word in this sentence. But conversely, if I can't grasp the meaning of each word, I can't understand the meaning of the whole sentence.

On words, because the most prominent thing in this book is the tolerance and generosity between a hundred schools of thought.

Just one word, because the most prominent thing in this book is the tolerance and generosity between a hundred schools of thought.

The word "benevolence", because the Analects is a Confucian classic, the most important thing in Confucianism is "benevolence".

I will choose goodness, because as for good deeds, life in this world is the pursuit of perfection.

As far as one word is concerned, the content of the whole book is discussed around this one word.

I think many of the words in the Analects are very important to people.

There are many words in the Analects, and each person has a different weight, so the choice is also different.

I think it's a treatise, and the most important thing for a lecture is to talk about the Tao.

I think it should be Ren, the benevolent is invincible, and his strength I think is very strong.

I would choose benevolence, which is a very important word and is also the core idea.

I think if I had to pick one of the most important words in the Analects, I would choose loyalty; I think this word is particularly profound, and this word is to pay attention to the fundamentals of being a person.

I would choose the word Lian, I think this word is particularly important; Because I think this word represents the attitude of courtesy, righteousness, honesty and honesty, and also expresses the creation of Chinese politicians and thinkers in the past dynasties, and the construction of a clean government ideology and a clean government system formed in the process of practice.

The total word count of the Analects is 15,900 words.

Huang Kan's hand-criticized "Baiwen Thirteen Classics" font is larger, neatly arranged, not mixed with the annotations of later generations, each page is full of 13 lines, each line is 32 words, statistics are very convenient. So I took matters into my own hands and calculated them article by article, and the results were as follows:

1) "Xueer" 493 words.

2) "For Politics" 579 words.

3) "Eight Hundred" 689 words.

4) "Liren" 501 words.

5) "Gongye Chang" 869 words.

6) "Yongye" 816 words.

7) 873 words.

8) "Taber" 613 words.

9) "Zihan" 806 words.

10) "Township Party" 642 words.

11) "Advanced" 1054 words.

12) "Yan Yuan" 992 words.

13) "Zi Lu" 1035 words.

14) "Constitutional Question", 1340 words.

15) "Wei Linggong" 904 words.

16) "Ji's" 863 words.

17) "Yang Goods" 1019 words.

18) "Neutrino" 618 words.

19) "Zizhang" 824 words.

20) "Yao Yue" 370 words.

The number of names in the above articles is not counted. Adding the twenty words together gives us a total of 15,900 words in the Analects.

Yu Dan's Analects is accompanied by the original text of the Analects, and its numbers are the same as those in the Analects in Huang Kan's Thirteen Classics of Baiwen. It can be seen that Ms. Yu Dan's statement that the number of words in the Analects is "more than 20,000 words" is just a taken for granted and cannot be true.