Shun

Shun is presented as an ancient exemplar of virtue, cited to show the ethical ideal associated with sincerity rather than as the subject of a narrated biography. The book says that a later explanatory lecture invokes his remarkable achievements, but supplies no particular episode from his life; his significance lies in the exemplary authority attached to his virtue.

Shun as an Ethical Example

In its discussion of the hexagram titled Inmost Sincerity, the book reports that the concluding commentary refers to Shun and the extraordinary achievements of his virtue. The citation makes him an illustration of sincerity’s moral power, not a character whose actions or personal history are recounted. No specific achievement is identified, so the account leaves the example general while treating his virtue as an established standard.

Sincerity and Its Effects

The surrounding commentary explains sincerity through the image of an inner state without self-preoccupation, supported by an unflawed steadiness of virtue. It says that a person possessing such sincerity can prevail with spiritual beings, other people, and even creatures ordinarily considered difficult to affect. The text’s account of Shun belongs to this argument: his virtue serves as a traditional example for a teaching about what sincere character can accomplish.

The discussion also stresses that sincerity does not displace practical moral discipline. Even where the text describes success in difficult undertakings, it concludes that firmness and correctness remain necessary. Shun’s exemplary status therefore supports a teaching that joins extraordinary moral influence to steadfast conduct, rather than promising success through divination or virtue detached from action.

Place in the Book’s Argument

Shun is mentioned amid a critical account of divination and the commentarial explanations attached to the hexagrams. The book distinguishes divination’s stated purpose—testing whether contemplated plans and circumstances are auspicious—from absolute foreknowledge of future events. It describes a procedure using forty-nine stalks, manipulated three times for each line, with eighteen manipulations required to form a hexagram; interpretation then turns to the judgments associated with King Wen and the line statements associated with the Duke of Zhou. Against this procedural and historical background, Shun enters not as a diviner but as an ethical precedent invoked by commentary.

That contrast clarifies the limited but pointed function of his appearance. The author questions claims made for divination and the divinatory apparatus, while recognizing the practical moral emphasis of the book’s teachings. Shun’s remembered virtue anchors that emphasis: he exemplifies the kind of character through which sincerity is said to have influence, even though the evidence offers no biographical detail with which to expand the portrait.