Why Is Popular Acclaim Not Proof of Merit in the Liu Tao?

A fresh translation of today’s passage

Original text

Words and concepts

• Promote the worthy (舉賢)
  To identify and raise people judged worthy. The chapter distinguishes making such a selection from giving the selected person effective work.
• Benefit of their work (功)
  An achieved result, not simply a list of approved names or a ceremonial appointment.
• Name and reality (名／實)
  The declared description of a practice and what is actually done under that description.
• Common opinion (世俗)
  The praise circulating among people at large. The term does not by itself identify an official examination or a defined electorate.
• Worthy (賢)
  A person fit to carry responsibility. The chapter eventually connects worth to talent, ability, and the demands of a named office.

A policy can sound virtuous and still fail

King Wen does not ask why an openly corrupt ruler collapses. His puzzle is harder. The ruler is committed to promoting worthy people, a policy that already carries moral approval, but the expected benefit never arrives.

The evidence of failure is not subtle. Disorder becomes more severe and approaches danger and ruin. The question therefore refuses to treat the ruler’s announced intention as the proper measure of his conduct. A good label must answer to consequences.

This makes the passage more than a warning against choosing obviously bad candidates. It examines a system that can display the correct value while failing to make that value effective. “Promoting the worthy” may be visible in proclamations, ceremonies, recommendations, or titles. None of those forms guarantees useful service.

Nomination is not employment

Tai Gong’s first answer turns on two verbs. The ruler raises or recommends worthy people, but does not use them. The distinction is organizational before it is psychological.

A person can be acknowledged without receiving a task. An office can be granted while its holder is denied the authority needed to act. Advice can be requested and then ignored. The four lines do not specify which of these failures has occurred, so a close reading should not invent a missing scene.

They do establish a minimum test. If the selected person’s capacity never enters the work of government, the ruler has acquired only the name of promoting the worthy. The reality requires more than recognition.

The formulation also protects the argument from an easy defense: “But worthy people were appointed.” Tai Gong asks what followed the appointment. The chapter judges the practice at the point where ability should become action.

Why praise is attractive evidence

The next answer identifies the ruler’s error in selection. He prefers people praised by common opinion. This is not an irrational starting point. A ruler cannot personally know every possible official, and reputation carries information across distance.

Praise is also efficient. It compresses many judgments into a simple signal: this person is admired. The problem begins when the signal is mistaken for proof. A large volume of approval may measure visibility, alliances, conformity, or successful self-presentation rather than fitness for a particular responsibility.

The text does not command the ruler to select only obscure people. Nor does it declare that praised people are necessarily unworthy. Its wording is narrower: preference for those whom common opinion praises can result in failing to obtain the worthy. Reputation and merit may overlap, but one cannot be substituted mechanically for the other.

The omitted continuation explains the danger of factions

Immediately after the excerpt, Tai Gong describes what happens when popular praise defines worth and popular blame defines unworthiness. Those with many partisans advance; those with few partisans withdraw.

This continuation supplies a mechanism. Reputation is not a voice without a speaker. Groups can repeat praise, protect allies, obscure capable rivals, and make agreement appear broader than it is. A candidate’s social reach can therefore become confused with ability.

That does not make every network corrupt. Institutions require cooperation, and testimony from others can reveal qualities that private inspection misses. The warning concerns an unchecked conversion: many supporters becomes worthy; few supporters becomes unworthy.

Once that conversion is accepted, selection rewards the capacity to gather a party. The work attached to the office recedes from view. The ruler may sincerely believe that he is following public judgment while the process steadily excludes less connected candidates.

The chapter ends with roles, talent, and examination

The final answer in “Promoting the Worthy” offers a contrasting procedure. Generals and ministers divide their responsibilities and recommend people according to the names of offices. Names and actual performance are then checked against one another; talent is selected and ability examined.

The order is significant. It begins with a role, not with a famous person. The demands of that role provide a basis for asking what ability matters. A candidate’s reputation can enter the inquiry, but it cannot define the standard by itself.

The chapter does not provide a scored test, a fixed bureaucracy, or a complete law of appointments. “Examine ability” leaves many practical questions unanswered. Still, the movement from office to capacity is clearer than the movement from applause to appointment.

This closing procedure also qualifies the chapter’s title. To promote the worthy is not merely to search for morally impressive individuals in the abstract. Worth must be considered in relation to responsibility and observable work.

“Name” is not merely a lie

It would be too simple to read ming, “name,” as deliberate fraud and shi, “reality,” as hidden truth. The ruler in King Wen’s question may believe his own policy. A practice can acquire a respected name through partial performance.

People have indeed been recommended. The court may genuinely value worthiness. The failure lies in stopping before that value governs actual assignments and decisions.

A name also remains useful. Without a named office or a stated standard, performance cannot easily be judged. Later in the chapter, official names help organize the examination of actual ability. The contrast is not between all language and all action. It is between language that is tested by practice and language allowed to replace practice.

Employment also requires room to act

“Does not employ them” can describe more than a refusal to appoint. A court might grant a title yet withhold the information, authority, or hearing needed for the officeholder’s judgment to matter. The excerpt does not identify a particular obstruction, so these remain possible forms of the gap rather than reported events. They clarify why a title alone cannot settle the question. Employment becomes real when assigned capacity can enter decisions and work. The ruler is therefore part of the diagnosis: when a promoted person produces no benefit, selection, assignment, and the conditions of service all require examination.

What these four lines do not prove

They do not prove that a solitary candidate is superior to a popular one. Few allies can result from integrity, incompetence, isolation, or mere chance; the excerpt gives no automatic rule.

They do not authorize arbitrary personal judgment by the ruler. The chapter’s ending distributes recommendation through generals and ministers and relates it to named responsibilities.

They do not explain every cause of political disorder. King Wen frames a particular problem about appointments, and Tai Gong answers within that frame. Finance, law, harvests, succession, and many other subjects are outside these lines.

They do not supply a modern hiring system. The text belongs to an ancient dialogue about rulership. Any present institutional application would require evidence and safeguards that the excerpt does not contain.

The real test begins after the worthy are named

The opening of “Promoting the Worthy” is memorable because it challenges a success that can be counted too early. A recommendation has been made. A respected name has been announced. The ruler can claim adherence to a virtuous policy.

Tai Gong waits for another question: was the person employed in a way that allowed ability to matter? He then asks how the person was selected. If common acclaim served as the verdict rather than one item of evidence, the ruler may have obtained reputation without worth.

The chapter’s answer is not contempt for public opinion. It is a demand for an additional comparison. Put the name of the office beside the work it requires. Put the candidate’s fame beside demonstrated capacity. Put the title of the policy beside its results.

Only then can “promoting the worthy” move from a valued name to an operating reality. The ruler’s error begins when the praise surrounding a person is allowed to finish an inquiry that it can only begin.

Source

Liu Tao (六韜), Civil Tao (文韜), chapter 10, “Promoting the Worthy” (舉賢). The Chinese was checked against Waseda University Library’s Hyōdai Bukei Shichisho Zenbun, corrected by Wang Huan and printed by Bunkindō in Kōka 3 (1846), call number イ13 00931. The Liu Tao occupies book seven; the selected exchange appears in physical volume five, image 18.