Rising Together to the Ranks of Lords: Innate Equality and the Pre-Qin Vision of Self-Cultivation, Compared with Western Freedom and Equality
Starting from a brief episode in the Analects, in which the noble Wenzi of Wei promotes his own household steward, Zhuan, to stand alongside him among the lords, this essay reads that small event against the great declarations of freedom and equality since the Renaissance: the West places its ideal at the starting line, while the pre-Qin thinkers built the ideal into lived reality.
IV. The Pre-Qin View of Position: Two-Way Obligation and Mobility Within Difference of Rank
4.1 The Reciprocity of Rectifying Names: "The Ruler Employs the Minister with Ritual Propriety; the Minister Serves the Ruler with Loyalty"
When the Master speaks of "rectifying names," he is not issuing everyone a permanent identity card — he is demanding that names correspond to actual responsibility. When Duke Jing of Qi asked about government, the Master answered: "Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son." (Analects, "Yan Yuan") If this line is read only as an arrangement of ranks from high to low, its verbal force is lost: the ruler must truly be a ruler, the minister must truly be a minister, and father and son likewise each fulfill their own responsibility. A title is not a license allowing one party to make one-way demands — it places a higher demand on whoever holds that title.
When Duke Ding of Lu asked how ruler and minister should deal with one another, the Master put it even more plainly: "The ruler employs the minister with ritual propriety; the minister serves the ruler with loyalty." (Analects, "Ba Yi") How the ruler employs the minister carries the prior condition of "with ritual propriety"; how the minister serves the ruler carries the answering condition of "with loyalty." Ritual propriety here is not mere courtesy — it means recognizing the other as a person, granting him fitting treatment, and keeping commands within legitimate bounds. Loyalty, too, is not blind obedience — it means carrying out one's charge wholeheartedly, and speaking frankly when necessary. If each side demands only the second half of the sentence from the other, the order tips at once.
The reciprocity of rectifying names means that difference of position is never a zone exempt from moral scrutiny. If a superior claims authority, he must be able to say whom that authority serves and what responsibility supports it; if a subordinate claims loyalty, he must be able to show that his loyalty is not flattery, but a commitment to the right way of handling shared affairs. The higher the office, the less one may treat ritual propriety as a favor bestowed on subordinates, since one already carries the obligation to employ them with such propriety; the lower the position, the less one may treat loyalty as the abdication of judgment, since serving the ruler loyally includes not letting one's master drift into injustice.
Applied to organizations today, rectifying names requires that a person in charge truly act as a person in charge, and a member truly act as a member. Those in charge must state goals, resources, and risks clearly, and must not turn a vague wish into endless unpaid overtime for subordinates; members must do their professional work well, and must also speak up promptly when they discover an error. If a title retains only power and no responsibility, name and substance have parted ways; if a member retains only obedience and no judgment, the relationship has been hollowed out. The pre-Qin view of position does not abolish hierarchy, but uses mutual obligation to keep hierarchy from turning into mutual devouring.
4.2 "Serve the Ruler According to the Way; If That Is Not Possible, Then Stop": A Subordinate Is Not a Tool
The Master has one especially weighty line: "Serve the ruler according to the Way; if that is not possible, then stop." (Analects, "Xian Jin") As a minister, one should serve one's ruler according to what is right; if the ruler will not accept the right way, one should stop, rather than surrendering one's life and reputation without limit to a mistaken command. This line acknowledges the reality that a subordinate receives orders from a superior, yet within that reality it preserves a line that must never be crossed: obedience cannot demand that a person betray a higher legitimacy.
"Stopping" here does not mean walking away lightly, still less dressing up every momentary displeasure as a matter of principle. Genuine stopping usually comes only after remonstration, persuasion, bearing the consequences, and a cautious withdrawal. A person who resigns at the slightest friction over trivial matters demonstrates not principle but a lack of endurance; but a person who, knowing full well that a command will harm the innocent or corrupt the shared enterprise, still shirks responsibility with "I am only following orders," has reduced himself to a soulless tool. The Master's restraint in this line comes precisely from his awareness of how heavy actual relationships are, even as he refuses to let that reality swallow a person's judgment.
This line also constrains the superior in turn. If a subordinate has the right to serve according to the Way, then a superior cannot treat honest counsel as rebellion, or withdrawal as disgrace. A leader who hears only praise has, in effect, already lost the capacity to obtain true information; an organization that lets people only stay and never refuse will let all its errors accumulate until the moment no one can bear them. To permit a legitimate "stopping" does not weaken order — it installs a safeguard within order, so that a single mistaken command cannot send the whole system out of control.
Seen from the standpoint of self-cultivation, "if not possible, then stop" also requires that a subordinate first ask himself whether he is truly serving according to the Way. If he has not even carried out his own duties well, yet calls his willfulness a matter of principle, he is using lofty words to disguise laziness; but if he has already fulfilled his responsibilities and the environment continues to demand injustice, stopping in good time is a protection for both himself and others. That human dignity persists even within difference of rank is precisely because every person retains an inner place from which he can judge, remonstrate, and withdraw. This place is not granted by external rank — it is sustained by long learning and self-discipline.
4.3 The Tradition of Recommending the Worthy: Zhonggong's Question About Government, Qi Xi's Recommendation of His Enemy, and Bao Shu's Yielding of Precedence
Zhonggong, serving as a steward of the Ji family, asked the Master about government. The Master said: "Put the various officers first, forgive small faults, and raise up the worthy and able." (Analects, "Zi Lu") First let each officer fulfill his own duty, be lenient toward minor faults, and then promote those who are worthy and able. When Zhonggong pressed him on how to know who is worthy, the Master answered: "Raise up those whom you know. As for those you do not know, will other people neglect them$13" — meaning: first recommend those you truly know, and as for those you do not know, will people simply abandon them$14 There is here a trust in public judgment: one who recommends need not claim to know everything — he need only honestly put forward those he genuinely recognizes, and allow a wider range of perspectives to supply the rest.
The story of Qi Xi recommending his enemy carries this principle into the most difficult territory of personal relations. When the Marquis of Jin asked who might succeed him in office, Qi Xi first named his own enemy, Xie Hu; when Xie Hu died before taking up the post, the Marquis asked again, and Qi Xi then recommended his own son, Qi Wu. Later he also recommended Yangshe Chi. The Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan) comments: "In naming his enemy, he was not flattering; in putting forward his son, he was not forming a faction; in recommending his own subordinate, he was not showing favoritism." (Zuozhuan, Duke Xiang, Year 3) To recommend an enemy is not to curry favor; to recommend a son is not to build a clique; to recommend a colleague is not partiality — what matters is whether the one recommended truly matches the talent and the post. If recommending the worthy is driven by personal likes and dislikes, it cannot become a public matter; only one who can place closeness and distance behind public rightness is qualified to hold the power of recommendation.
The friendship between Bao Shu and Guan Zhong shows yet another kind of yielding to the worthy. The two knew each other from their youth, and Guan Zhong was many times treated with understanding by Bao Shu in times of hardship. Later, when the state of Qi needed to choose someone to assist in governing the state, Bao Shu did not turn their old friendship into a reason to claim the high position for himself — instead he put Guan Zhong forward to bear the greater responsibility. Bao Shu knew that Guan Zhong's talent surpassed his own, and so he pushed both fame and the ruler's trust toward the more suitable person. There is no superficial leveling of "we are all the same" here — quite the opposite, there is a clear difference in talent; it is precisely because that difference was acknowledged that there could be the honesty of sending the right person to the right position.
Zhonggong's exchange teaches people to build a procedure for recommending the worthy; the story of Qi Xi teaches people to overcome the bias of closeness and distance; Bao Shu's yielding of precedence teaches people to let go of covetousness for position. Together the three show that mobility of rank cannot rely solely on the self-striving of those below — it also needs those who hold resources to open the door of their own accord. If there is only "you must work hard" and never "I am willing to recommend you," the channel of ascent turns into a rope that demands the subordinate climb it alone. True mobility happens when self-advancement and the bringing of others to completion occur together: some train themselves into usable talent, while others yield their public position to someone more suitable.
4.4 The Edge of a Counter-Example: Zang Wenzhong, "Thief of Position"
The pre-Qin thinkers did not naturally regard whoever held a position as therefore virtuous — quite the contrary, they often used sharp language to press the question of whether a person deserved his position. The Master said: "Was not Zang Wenzhong a thief of his position! He knew the worth of Liuxia Hui, yet would not stand together with him at court." (Analects, "Xian Wen") Zang Wenzhong knew full well that Liuxia Hui was worthy, yet would not let him stand alongside himself, and the Master therefore called him something like a "thief of position." Stealing a position is not stealing some tangible object — it is occupying a public post while refusing to let those with genuine talent and virtue enter the ranks of shared responsibility.
This line is especially worth reading alongside "rising together to the ranks of lords." Wenzi of Wei earned the judgment "wen" for recommending Zhuan, while Zang Wenzhong was called a thief of position for failing to raise up Liuxia Hui; both held high positions alike, and the difference lay not in whether they possessed power, but in whether they treated that power as a responsibility to bring the worthy to completion. If a person regards his office only as his own safety cushion, he will instinctively suppress potential rivals; his conduct may not be outrageous, and he may even be quite capable, yet because he will not yield precedence to the worthy, public affairs remain blocked by his private interest.
"Stealing a position" also uncovers a corruption more hidden than open tyranny. The faults of a tyrant are easy to see, but a mediocre, self-protecting official may occupy his post for a long time beneath a veneer of politeness, procedure, and prudence. He need not directly harm the worthy — he need only fail to recommend them, fail to share information, and keep them from access to key affairs, and talent will be stranded at the margins. What an organization loses this way is not only one person's opportunity, but its very capacity to recognize genuine ability. Once difference of rank is used to close off mobility, it begins to corrode the whole.
The Master's criticism of Zang Wenzhong also reminds those in lower positions not to blame their silence entirely on those above. Though Liuxia Hui's worth was known, he was not able to "stand together" with Zang Wenzhong, and there may well have been constraints of the age and circumstance behind this; yet the worthy must still hold to their own way, and must not trade virtue for resentment merely because they are, for the time being, unfulfilled. That a superior fails to raise up the worthy is a dereliction of duty; that a subordinate must still cultivate himself is another, separate labor. It is precisely because both sides bear responsibility that public order does not have to pin all its hope on any single good master.
4.5 Position Is Not Absolute: "The People Are Most Precious" and "I Have Heard of the Punishment of the Fellow Zhou, Not of the Murder of a Ruler"
Master Meng weighs rank on a still larger scale: "The people are most precious; the altars of soil and grain come next; the ruler is the least weighty." (Mencius, "Exhausting the Heart II") This does not arrange ruler, altars, and people into three interchangeable items — it explains that political value has a root and a foundation: the livelihood and peace of the common people are the very ground on which institutions and the ruler's position are established. If a ruler's position departs from the responsibility to nourish and protect the people, it cannot demand absolute obedience merely on the strength of its title. "Precious" here is not a market price — it names what ought to be cherished first.
Discussing King Wu's campaign against the tyrant Zhou, Master Meng also says: "I have heard of the punishment of the fellow Zhou, but I have not heard of the murder of a ruler." (Mencius, "King Hui of Liang II") Though Zhou held the title of ruler, once his conduct had made him a mere "fellow" who ravaged the people, overthrowing him could not simply be called a subject's murder of his ruler. Master Meng's intent is not to encourage anyone to wage a private feud under the pretext of justice, but to place the legitimacy of a ruler's position back within his conduct: a title cannot launder tyranny, nor can power turn injustice into justice.
Neither of these lines abolishes the relationship between high and low — instead they give that relationship a genuine standard. A ruler is a ruler not because sitting on high automatically makes him right, but because he can let the people find their place and give the altars of soil and grain their peace; a minister serves his ruler not because the ruler can never be wrong, but because he bears responsibility under a legitimate, shared goal. If a superior betrays that goal, a subordinate's loyalty can no longer be understood as unconditional compliance. Rank still exists, but the moral grounds for rank must be continually rebuilt.