What is meant by “regulating the family depends on cultivating the self” is this:
People become biased toward those they love,
biased against those they despise,
biased in favor of those they revere,
biased out of pity for those they feel sorry for,
and biased in disdain toward those they look down upon or neglect.
Thus, it is exceedingly rare in the world to find someone who, while fond of a person, can still recognize their faults – or who, while disliking someone, can still see their virtues.
Hence the old saying goes:
“No one sees the faults of his own child; no one thinks his own crops are less bountiful.”
This is why it is said: “Without self-cultivation, one cannot regulate one’s family.”
所謂齊其家在修其身者：
人之其所親愛而辟焉，
之其所賤惡而辟焉，
之其所畏敬而辟焉，
之其所哀矜而辟焉，
之其所敖惰而辟焉。
故好而知其惡，惡而知其美者，天下鮮矣！
故諺有之曰：「人莫知其子之惡，莫知其苗之碩。」
此謂身不修不可以齊其家。
Note
This passage offers a profound insight into a central challenge within the Confucian logic of “self-cultivation leading to family regulation”: the distorting influence of emotional partiality on fair judgment.
The Great Learning observes that in familial and social relationships, people easily lose objectivity due to subjective emotions – love, hatred, reverence, pity, or contempt – leading to bias, prejudice. When emotion overrides reason, one cannot treat family members fairly, let alone govern a state or bring peace to the world. The parent-child relationship serves as a prime example: out of excessive affection, parents often fail to see their children’s faults. Similarly, the farmer’s belief that “my crops are the best” illustrates how self-interest clouds perception. Both are classic cases of “private feelings obscuring moral clarity.”
Therefore, a key aim of “self-cultivation” is to overcome emotional prejudice and develop the capacity to “recognize faults in those you love and virtues in those you dislike” – a balanced mind grounded in fairness and moral reason. This does not reject human emotion but calls for guiding it through ethical discernment, so that love is tempered and aversion is moderated.
As Zhu Xi explains in his Collected Commentaries on The Great Learning, without “overcoming the self and returning to ritual propriety”, and if private desires dominate, then “within the family, affection overshadows righteousness, and emotion triumphs over principle,” inevitably disrupting domestic harmony.
Thus, The Great Learning roots effective family governance in individual moral self-awareness. Only through continuous self-reflection and cultivation – transcending instinctive preferences – can one achieve true “family regulation”: a household where each member fulfills their role with order, mutual respect, and justice.
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