Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Reading Group

Reading group: Mencius Book 1, the conversations with the kings

Ji-woo Park Fellow
· 5 replies · 243 views
Power & the stateChineseConfucianismMohismMenciusMozi#benevolent-government#livelihood#mencius#reading-group
Follow

I teach ethics at a secondary school in Seoul, and every year I tell my students that Mencius was a political philosopher before he was a theorist of human nature. They don't believe me, because the textbook only gives them the child at the well. So I'd like to read the opening book with a group and prove it to myself first.

Book 1 is a series of conversations between Mencius and rulers of the Warring States period, above all King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi. They want to know how to make their states strong. Mencius keeps answering a different question: what makes a ruler a true king.

I suggest D. C. Lau's Penguin translation or Bryan Van Norden's, which has helpful notes. Passages are cited the same way in both (1A1, 1A2 and so on).

Week 1: Book 1A. The famous opening, where the king asks what will profit his state and Mencius asks why he must speak of profit; the soldiers who ran fifty paces laughing at those who ran a hundred; and the long conversation with King Xuan about an ox.

Week 2: Book 1B. Sharing pleasures with the people, the size of royal parks, and the conversation about whether it was right to kill the tyrant Zhou.

The question to carry: is Mencius's account of legitimate rule about the ruler's heart, or about what the people actually receive? I suspect it's both, and that the connection between them is the whole point.

LikeReply
Follow5 replies

Members reply here. Reading is always free.

Sign in to reply

5 replies

  1. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    Week 1, 1A1. It helps to know who Mencius is arguing against. The Mohists made benefit, li, the test of everything: what benefits the people is right. When Mencius tells the king not to speak of profit but of benevolence and rightness, he's partly rejecting the Mohist vocabulary. But read the rest of the passage: if everyone from king to commoner pursues profit, the state is endangered. So his argument against profit is, rather awkwardly, that profit-seeking is unprofitable. The Mohists would have smiled.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Choi Byeong-hun

    Contributor

    Week 1, 1A3. As a former officer I loved the fifty paces. King Hui says he cares for his people more than neighbouring rulers do, and asks why his population doesn't grow. Mencius asks: if soldiers flee the battle, and one who ran fifty paces laughs at one who ran a hundred, is that right? Both ran. Being a little better than the worst is not the standard. Every institution I served in measured itself against its neighbours rather than against what it owed.

  3. Javier Morales

    Fellow

    Week 1, 1A7. For an economist this is the key passage. Mencius says only a gentleman can keep a constant heart without a constant livelihood; ordinary people without steady means will not have steady hearts, and will drift into crime, and then the ruler punishes them, which is like setting a trap for the people. So the ruler must first secure livelihoods, mulberry trees, livestock, fields, so the old can wear silk and eat meat, and only then teach. That's a theory of legitimacy that starts with material security, two thousand years before the welfare state.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Lin Pei-shan

      Contributor

      Week 1, also 1A7: the ox. The king saw an ox trembling on its way to be sacrificed and couldn't bear it, so he had a sheep substituted. People mocked him for meanness. Mencius says the heart that spared the ox is enough to make him a true king; he only needs to extend it to his people. I teach this to teenagers as the link Ji-woo is looking for: the ruler's heart matters because it is the root of what the people receive, and Javier's livelihoods are what that heart looks like extended.

      Helpful · 2
  4. Henrike Vogel

    Fellow

    Week 2, 1B2. King Xuan asks why his park, forty li square, seems too large to the people, when King Wen's park, seventy li square, seemed small. Mencius: King Wen shared his park with the woodcutters and the hunters; you put people to death for killing a deer in yours. It's not the size of the privilege but whether it is shared. And 1B8 is astonishing to read straight after: the tyrant Zhou had stopped being a king, so killing him was punishing a "mere fellow". Legitimacy can be lost. Kant, whom I've been reading for years, would never have said that so plainly.

    Helpful · 3