Li (Confucian ritual)

In answering a question about filial conduct, Analects 2.5 distinguishes serving parents while alive, burying them after death and conducting sacrifices. Ritual supplies a norm across these settings. Its scope thus involves sustained relationships as well as particular ceremonies.

References: [1]

The answer to Yan Yuan at Analects 12.1 connects self-discipline and a return to ritual with ren. It then extends the requirement to looking, listening, speaking and acting. Ritual reaches everyday conduct rather than remaining confined to formal occasions, and is connected here with ethical cultivation.

References: [2]

Analects 2.3 contrasts guidance through ordinances and punishments with guidance through virtue and ritual. The contrast concerns how government affects people’s dispositions as well as outward compliance. Ritual consequently has an educative role within the text’s account of political order.

References: [1]

Analects 12.15 joins broad cultural learning with discipline through ritual. Knowledge and practical norms are meant to work together in cultivation. Interpreting li therefore calls for attention to the ceremony or relationship at issue and to the demands made on the person acting within it.

References: [2]