Hanfeizi · 解老第二十
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故曰：「上德不德，是以有德。」
Thus it says: the highest virtue does not make a display of virtue, and therefore has virtue.
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes · Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed · CC BY-SA 4.0A route through this passage
19 Han characters · 10 distinct forms · 5 units separated by the witness’s punctuation
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- Test one unit.
德則無德，
Mark a possible predicate and its participants. Record what you have supplied rather than found explicitly in the text. - Reconstruct the argument. Connect the units in your own words. Where does a description, question, contrast, or consequence depend on your interpretation?
Investigate 6 written forms in this passage
Matched by spelling. These are candidate reading procedures, not assigned grammatical analyses.
Watch recurrence: 德 × 7 則 × 2 不 × 2 有 × 2. Repetition of a graph need not mean repetition of a sense.
Computed from this exact witness · 1 contextual editorial excerpt also available. The guide is a set of reading prompts, not a translation. Sources & methods
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故曰 followed by the quoted wording.
zimai editorial draft · not independently reviewed. Applies to 故曰：「上德不德，是以有德。」
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Each connection states its purpose. Comparisons are editorial learning aids; shared wording alone does not prove influence.
Explicit textual citationA quotation and its interpretive settingHanfeizi introduces this wording with 故曰; the same wording appears in the pinned Laozi 38. That explicit framing supports a textual connection. Read the surrounding commentary to see what Hanfeizi makes of it; the match does not establish the whole history or direction of transmission of these witnesses.
Shared wording
Computed exact phrases in the pinned witnesses. These links do not assign a sense or assert borrowing.
老子 · 第三十八章是以有德上德不德，是以有德；下德不失德，是以無德。上德無為而無以為；下德為之而有以為。上仁為之而無以為，上義為
韓非子 · 解老第二十上德不德德者，內也；得者，外也。「上德不德」，言其神不淫於外也。神不淫於外則身全，
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論語 · Keep different negatives apart未之有也論語 · Keep different negatives apart不患人之不己知論語 · Keep different negatives apart回也不愚論語 · Keep different negatives apart君子不器Edition, source, and reuse
- Work
- 韓非子 · Hanfeizi
- Attribution
- Traditionally associated with Han Fei; authorship of individual chapters is not uniform or certain.
- Digital witness
- Kanseki Repository · KR3c0005 · base edition tls
- Contributors
- Kanseki Repository (Kanripo) contributors; upstream base-edition labels retained in each original file.
- Source position
- KR3c0005_020.txt, lines 49–53. HF 20.01:04; jishi 326; jiaoshi 721; jiaozhu 1i2; shiping 596
- Version
55418cf95c05d3bcc35e26bb568cf0a8da957332- Reuse
- CC BY-SA 4.0. Text extraction and teaching additions share this licence.
- Text policy
- Source spelling and punctuation retained. Encoding headers, page markers, paragraph markers, whitespace, and leading section numbers are removed from the reading view. No silent script conversion or textual correction.
- Teaching
- zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes. English renderings are excerpt-level reading aids, not a full published translation. Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed.
Source-file SHA-256: 09f8d7cd50a6c009d4ed2fa1582787884479f1cce0d3ffd03a0dc7526f1db54b. A source comment that cites a translator is an upstream reference, not the attribution of a translation imported here.