Mencius

Mencius the Chinese philosopher of the fourth century BC (c. 372-289 BC), the most influential Confucian thinker after Confucius himself, remembered for his teaching that human nature is good, for his theory that a ruler holds power only on condition of benevolence, and for the book of dialogues that bears his name.

Life and Career

Mencius, born Meng Ke and known as Mengzi or Master Meng, came from the small state of Zou, near the birthplace of Confucius in what is now Shandong province. He was orphaned young, and the tradition tells how his mother moved the household three times to place the boy near good influences and once cut the cloth on her loom to show him the futility of interrupted effort.

He studied in the school of Confucius's grandson and became a leading teacher of the Confucian tradition. Like his master he sought a ruler who would employ him, and he spent decades travelling among the states of the Warring States period with a following of disciples, offering counsel to the ambitious kings of Qi, Liang and other domains.

His encounters with rulers were often confrontational. When the king asked him whether profit should guide a state, Mencius replied that benevolence and righteousness should guide it, and asked why the king must speak of profit. Such answers made him unwelcome at courts that prized conquest and wealth, and in his old age he retired to write and teach.

He died around 289 BC, more than a century after Confucius. During his lifetime his doctrines were little followed, but his influence grew after his death, and in the Song dynasty, a thousand years later, his book was elevated to the status of a classic equal with the Analects.

Human Nature and Moral Psychology

Mencius is best known for the doctrine that human nature is good. He argued that every person possesses four innate moral seeds or sprouts: commiseration, which grows into benevolence; shame and dislike of wrongdoing, which grows into righteousness; deference and modesty, which grow into ritual propriety; and the sense of right and wrong, which grows into wisdom.

His proof is drawn from experience. He observed that anyone who suddenly sees a child about to fall into a well feels a pang of alarm and concern, not in order to win favour with the parents nor from any calculation of gain, but spontaneously. From this he concluded that the capacity for compassion is native to the human heart.

Why then do people do wrong? Mencius answered that the moral sprouts can be stunted or neglected like plants in a field that is poorly tended, or destroyed by bad conditions. He told a famous parable about the hill of Ox Mountain, once covered with trees, which was stripped bare by axes and grazing until it looked barren; the hill too had a nature, and so do men, and their corruption is an injury rather than a true nature.

The task of education and government is therefore to cultivate the sprouts, to give people the conditions in which their good tendencies can grow. Mencius insisted that moral effort is possible for everyone and that the sage is not a different species from ordinary people but one who has fully developed the common endowment.

Benevolent Government and the Mandate of Heaven

Mencius drew radical political conclusions from his view of human nature. A ruler should govern with benevolence, regulating taxes low, sparing the people the burdens of war, guaranteeing them land and livelihood, and waging war only as a last resort. He argued that a king who treats his people well will attract them from neighbouring states and so grow strong without conquest.

He also developed the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven into a theory of the ruler's conditional legitimacy. Heaven grants a dynasty its authority only so long as it brings peace and welfare to the people. When a ruler becomes a tyrant, he forfeits the mandate, and the people, through the judgment of Heaven, may rightly depose him.

This reasoning led him to the startling claim that a wicked king is not a king at all but a mere fellow, so that killing such a man is not regicide but the punishment of a criminal. Rulers were alarmed by this doctrine, and Mencius was always careful to present it as a warning to the wise rather than a licence to rebellion.

He also ranked the persons of the political order, holding that the people are the most important, the altars of the state next, and the ruler least. This ordering, simple as it seems, gave later Chinese thinkers a standard for judging even the most powerful sovereign.

The Book of Mencius

The Book of Mencius, or Mengzi, is a collection in seven chapters of dialogues and sayings, more discursive and argumentative than the Analects. In it Mencius appears as a formidable debater who defends the Confucian tradition against the rival schools of his day, above all against the egoism attributed to Yang Zhu and the universal love of Mozi.

The work contains his celebrated argument against the later Mohists concerning love without distinctions, and his exchanges with the agriculturalist Xu Xing, whom he refuted by showing that the division of labour makes some matters the proper concern of rulers. It also includes his discussion of the flood-control works of the sage kings, whom he praised for acting in the interest of the people.

Stylistically the book is vivid and forceful, full of metaphor and anecdote. Its arguments advance by analogy, and it displays a confidence that the moral order of the world can be discerned by reason. Later readers prized it both for its doctrine and for its example of sustained philosophical debate.

Influence and Legacy

Mencius had a complicated place in the tradition. His teaching about the goodness of human nature was disputed by Xunzi, and in the Tang dynasty it was criticised in some quarters. The scholar Han Yu defended him, and in the Song dynasty Zhu Xi incorporated the Mencius into the Four Books that became the core of the examination curriculum.

His political ideas proved durable. The doctrine that a ruler who oppresses his people loses the Mandate of Heaven became a standard resource for officials who wished to criticise an emperor, and the phrase that the people are the most valuable was cited by reformers in every dynasty.

In the twentieth century Mencius attracted renewed attention as a thinker who grounded rights and welfare in the natural moral capacities of human beings. Scholars have compared his account of the moral sprouts with later Western theories of moral sentiment, and his defence of humane government continues to be invoked in debates about politics and ethics.

See also

• Confucius
• Xunzi
• Mandate of Heaven
• Four Books