第七十一章 Dao De Jing · Chapter 71
Knowing that you do not know is best; thinking you know is a sickness.
Text
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知不知上，
To know that you do not know is best;
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不知知病。
not to know, yet think you know, is a sickness.
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夫唯病病，是以不病。
Only by recognizing the sickness as sickness are you free of it.
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圣人不病，以其病病，
The sage is not sick, because he recognizes the sickness as sickness;
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是以不病。
that is why he is not sick.
Words in this chapter
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 知 | zhī | to know |
| 不 | bù | not |
| 上 | shàng | highest, supreme |
| 病 | bìng | sickness; to treat as sickness |
| 夫唯 | fú wéi | precisely because |
| 是以 | shì yǐ | therefore, for this reason |
| 圣人 | shèng rén | the sage |
| 以 | yǐ | by means of, with |
| 其 | qí | its, his, their |
Compare: James Legge (1891)
To know and yet (think) we do not know is the highest (attainment); not to know (and yet think) we do know is a disease.
It is simply by being pained at (the thought of) having this disease that we are preserved from it. The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.
Public domain. Source: Wikisource.
Meaning of chapter 71
Chapter 71 is about knowing the limits of one's knowledge. It opens with four characters, 知不知上: to know that you do not know is best. Not to know, yet to think you know, is a sickness (病).
The rest of the chapter plays on that one word. Only by recognizing the sickness as sickness (病病) is one free of it; the sage is not sick because he recognizes it as such. The repetition makes the point by its form: the cure is simply to see the fault for what it is.
The opening line can also be read as "to know, yet to hold oneself as not knowing, is best"; the house translation takes the plainer reading. The thought is close to chapter 33, where knowing oneself is clarity, and to chapter 56, where those who know do not speak. Readers of the Analects will recall a saying of Confucius in a similar spirit: to take what you know as known and what you do not know as unknown is knowledge.