國立臺灣大學哲學論評

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Illness is a survival challenge for people at all times. It is also one of the situations Confucius cautiously dealt with. In The Analects of Confucius, illness was touched upon numerous times with brief documentation of the actions and attitude that ancients adopted in the face of it. Illness is an abnormal situation that threatens individual’s life and affects interpersonal interactions. Based on experience, the ancients developed corresponding hygiene and treatment methods. They would even turn to religious activities for help. Hence illness could be considered as the confluence of person, others and self, and the human-transcendence relationship. In addition to physical diseases, illness presents itself as a metaphor in The Analects of Confucius. Confucius used illness as a metaphor for deficiency of virtue a few times when he talked about virtue cultivation and moral topics. It is not only the human body but virtue also can be affected by “illness.” Both must be treated with caution. This study shall analyze the dimensions of relationship presented by physical illness in The Analects of Confucius as well as to clarify the metaphor of moral illness in The Analects of Confucius with the help of modern metaphor theory in order to explain how virtue is cultivated according to Confucius.