Thinker · TH-0291
Mencius
Mencius was a Chinese Confucian thinker of the Warring States period, regarded in the later tradition as the 'Second Sage' after Confucius; his dates…
孟子
Also known as Mengzi, Meng Ke, Meng-tzu
trad. c. 372 – 289 BCE · State of Zou (present-day Shandong); courts of Qi and Wei, China
Traditions: Chinese
Schools: Confucianism
Mencius was a Chinese Confucian thinker of the Warring States period, regarded in the later tradition as the 'Second Sage' after Confucius; his dates are traditional. He travelled among the courts of rival states advising rulers on humane government. The book that bears his name, compiled from his conversations, argues that human nature is good: everyone has the 'sprouts' of virtue, shown by the alarm anyone would feel on seeing a child about to fall into a well.
Key ideas
- Human nature is good: all people have four sprouts, of compassion, shame, deference and the sense of right and wrong.
- The child at the well shows that moral response is immediate and universal, not calculated for advantage.
- Virtue is cultivated by nourishing these sprouts, as a farmer tends crops, neither neglecting nor forcing them.
- Rulers must govern with benevolence; one who brutalises the people loses the standing of a true ruler.
Major works
- Mengzi (The Mencius), the record of his conversations compiled by disciples, c. 4th–3rd century BCE
- Mengzi jizhu (Zhu Xi's collected commentary, 12th century), which made the text one of the Four Books
In the conversation
- Discussion The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
- Debate ‘Existence precedes essence’ is an empirical claim, and the evidence is against it
- Question If consent of the governed is the newcomer, what did legitimacy rest on before it?
- Debate Mozi was a consequentialist two thousand years before Bentham, and lost the argument the same way
- Question What exactly is Wang Yangming’s liangzhi, and is it just the Chinese word for conscience?
- Question Teaching ethics to fifteen-year-olds: do I water sprouts or straighten warped wood?
- Question When sovereignty belongs to God, are rulers more limited or less?
- Discussion At my office “Confucian values” means obey the boss. Where did the reciprocity go?
- Question If a life has a place rather than a meaning, what happens when the place is unjust?
- Debate On the Confucian view there is no self behind your roles, and that is a strength
- Discussion In the five Confucian relationships, friendship is the odd one out. Why is it there?
- Question Why do some translators refuse to render ren as ‘benevolence’?
- Question If virtue ethics says ‘do what the virtuous person would do’, how does a beginner use that?
- Discussion Neither filling nor drawing out: what the Analects and Xunzi think a learner is
- Debate Dai Zhen was right: moral principle used to crush desire is itself a cruelty
- Question Can you be a good person in a role that sometimes requires you to do bad things?
- Discussion Mencius’s child at the well, seen from a delivery room in Sylhet
- Question Does “wrong” mean the same thing in every language, or does each language build in a moral theory?
- Debate Confucian ethics is a role ethics, and filing it under virtue ethics hides its best idea
- Question Why did Confucian thinkers rarely ask whether the will is free?
In the Journal
- Journal Should you care for everyone equally? Mozi and the first great argument about impartiality
- Journal Is morality objective? A beginner’s guide to meta-ethics
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Mencius takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 3.1 Meta-Ethics When you say cruelty is wrong, what kind of statement are you making?
- 3.1.1 Moral Realism vs Anti-Realism If everyone approved of torturing children, would it still be wrong?
- 3.1.3 Moral Epistemology How would you check whether a moral claim is true?
- 3.2.3 Character-Based Approaches Should ethics ask what to do, or who to be?
- 3.4 Moral Psychology Are people naturally good, naturally selfish, or naturally neither?