Mencius (Mengzi)

c. 372 - c. 289 BCE · Chinese (of the State of Zou, late Warring States period) · Confucian philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, Chinese philosophy

All humans have the heart that cannot bear to see the suffering of others.

Mencius spent decades traveling Warring States courts seeking a ruler willing to govern by the kingly way, and found none. Born in Zou around 372 BCE, he defended Confucian ethics against two rivals: Yang Zhu's egoism, counseling withdrawal, and Mozi's universal love, demanding equal concern for all. Neither held — the Mohist Yi Zhi gave his own parents an elaborate funeral while preaching equal regard, and that inconsistency said everything.

Topics Mencius (Mengzi) addresses

• human nature is good (xing shan)
• the four sprouts (si duan)
• ren (benevolence)
• yi (righteousness)
• li (ritual propriety)
• zhi (wisdom)
• the heart-mind (xin)
• the child by the well
• the flood-like qi (haoran zhi qi)
• the unmoved heart-mind
• extending (tui) the natural sympathies
• internal versus external righteousness (yi nei/yi wai)
• the Gaozi debate on human nature
• the willow-wood analogy
• the Niu Mountain parable
• the kingly way (wang dao)
• humane government (ren zheng)
• the hegemonic way (ba dao)
• the mandate of Heaven (tian ming)
• the people are most important
• Heaven sees as the people see
• regicide and tyrannicide
• the king and the sacrificial ox
• against Mozi and universal love

Converse with Mencius (Mengzi) on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Mencius (Mengzi)'s own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.