The choices of the three virtuous men at the end of the Yin dynasty

The Analects remembers three men of the Yin dynasty as virtuous through the sharply different choices each made in a crisis: Weizi withdrew from court, Jizi became a slave, and Bi Gan remonstrated and died. Their compressed account gives no shared dramatic scene or explanation of the crisis; its force lies in the contrast among withdrawal, endurance in enslavement, and fatal opposition, which Confucius gathers under a single moral judgment.

Three responses to crisis

The account assigns each man a distinct action. Weizi left the court; Jizi became a slave; Bi Gan remonstrated and died. It neither elaborates on the circumstances surrounding these decisions nor describes what followed them. The differences themselves carry the meaning: one man departs, one remains in a condition of servitude, and one confronts authority through remonstrance at the cost of his life.

These are not presented as stages in a common course of action or as choices ranked against one another. The text places them side by side, allowing each response to retain its distinct form. Its brevity makes the contrast especially clear: the account records not the men’s deliberations but what each did.

Confucius’ judgment

After naming the three actions, Confucius declares that the Yin dynasty possessed these three men of virtue. His judgment embraces all three without explaining that they shared a motive or acted in the same way. The passage therefore identifies integrity through more than one response to political crisis: withdrawal, enslavement, and remonstrance ending in death all fall within its moral recognition.

The judgment also changes the register of the brief historical notice. The men’s actions are not left as bare outcomes; Confucius names their common significance as virtue. Yet the account preserves their differences rather than turning them into a single rule about what a virtuous person must do. Their remembered example consists both in the range of their choices and in the judgment that holds them together.

Form and significance

The passage offers no dialogue, description, or account of the larger political circumstances. Its three compact clauses move directly from action to consequence, then conclude with Confucius’ collective assessment. That structure keeps the reader’s attention on the choices themselves and on the possibility that morally recognized conduct need not take one uniform form.

The men’s differing fates sharpen the passage’s final claim: virtue is attributed across withdrawal, enslavement, and a death following remonstrance. The text does not supply grounds for filling in their private motives or for deciding which response was best. Instead, it preserves a small set of distinct acts and a clear verdict that all three men belong among the virtuous.