jūn zhǔ zhī guān
Also rendered: office of the monarch (君 as monarch) · office of the sovereign (主 as sovereign)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The heart’s office, and the one the whole chapter rests on. What issues from it is 神明 — spirit brightness, the clarity by which a person knows and judges. Everything the chapter finally says turns on this office alone: if the ruler is clear those below are at peace, and if the ruler is not clear all twelve are in danger. The list is an anatomy only in appearance; in argument it is a chain of command.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Common English | the office of the monarch / the sovereign organ | Both current. Monarch is the more common and the less apt, since it carries a constitutional weight the text does not have. |
| This site | the office of the ruler | 君 is the one who rules rather than a crowned head; the chapter's contrast is simply between a ruler who is clear and one who is not, and that contrast carries over into English unchanged. |
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