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Junzi (The Superior Person)

Junzi (The Superior Person)

The junzi (君子), translated by Wilhelm as superior man and by later translators as noble person or superior person, is the ethical subject the I Ching presupposes. The junzi is not a moral ideal imposed on the book from outside; the junzi is the reader whom the Judgments address. “The superior person acts for the completion of virtue; His virtuous action may be seen in his daily course” (Huang, The Complete I Ching, on Qian).

The junzi is distinguished by the capacity to discern timing. “It is only the holy person who knows when to advance and when to retreat, and how to maintain existence and how to let perish, and does not lose appropriateness” (Huang, on Qian). Where the inferior person follows artificial knowledge and artificial capacity, the superior person keeps the “innate knowledge and innate capacity” — what Mencius called the faculty the “inferior people lose; superior people keep” (Cleary / Liu I-ming, The Taoist I Ching).

The junzi ethic aligns the I Ching with the broader Confucian-Taoist cultivation literature and provides the reason King Wen’s ethical turn was possible: the book is read not to foretell what will happen but to discern what the person of character should do. “This book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one’s own character, attitude, and motives” (Jung, foreword, The I Ching). The method aims at self-knowledge; the junzi is its subject.

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