Mencius (c. 372-289 BCE)
Better known in China as “Master Meng” (Chinese: Mengzi), Mencius was a fourth-century BCE Chinese thinker whose importance in the Confucian tradition is second only to that of Confucius
himself. In many ways, he played the role of St. Paul to Confucius’
Jesus, interpreting the thought of the master for subsequent ages while
simultaneously impressing Confucius’ ideas with his own philosophical
stamp. He is most famous for his theory of human nature, according to
which all human beings share an innate goodness that either can be
cultivated through education and self-discipline or squandered through
neglect and negative influences, but never lost altogether. While it is
not clear that Mencius’ views prevailed in early Chinese philosophical
circles, they eventually won out after gaining the support of
influential medieval commentators and thinkers such as Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi,
1130-1200 CE) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529 CE). (See Romanization systems for Chinese terms.)
Today contemporary philosophical interest in evolutionary psychology
and sociobiology has inspired fresh appraisals of Mencius, while recent
philological studies question the coherence and authenticity of the
text that bears his name. Mencius remains a perennially attractive
figure for those intrigued by moral psychology, of which he was the
foremost practitioner in early China.
The Mencius of History
Like the historical Confucius, the historical Mencius is available
only through a text that, in its complete form at least, postdates his
traditional lifetime (372-289 BCE). The philological controversy
surrounding the date and composition of the text that bears his name is
far less intense than that which surrounds the Confucian
Analects, however. Most scholars agree that the entire
Mencius was
assembled by Mencius himself and his immediate disciples, perhaps
shortly after his death. The text records several encounters with
various rulers during Mencius’ old age, which can be dated between 323
and 314 BCE, making Mencius an active figure no later than the late
fourth century BCE.
The other major source of information about Mencius’ life is the biography found in the
Shiji (
Records of the Grand Historian)
of Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), which states that he was a native of Zou
(Tsou), a small state near Confucius’ home state of Lu in the Shandong
peninsula of northeastern China. He is said to have studied with
Confucius’ grandson, Zisi (Tzu-ssu), although most modern scholars
doubt this. He also is thought to have become a minister of the state
of Qi (Ch’i), which also was famous as the home of the Jixia (Chi-hsia)
Academy. The Jixia Academy was a kind of early Chinese “think tank”
sponsored the ruler of Qi that produced, among other thinkers, Mencius’
later opponent
Xunzi (Hsun-tzu, 310-220 BCE).
Mencius was born in a period of Chinese history known as the Warring
States (403-221 BCE), during which various states competed violently
against one another for mastery of all of China, which once was unified
under the Zhou dynasty until its collapse, for all intents and
purposes, in 771 BCE. It was a brutal and turbulent era, which
nonetheless gave rise to many brilliant philosophical movements,
including the Confucian tradition of which Mencius was a foremost
representative. The common intellectual and political problem that
Warring States thinkers hoped to solve was the problem of China’s
unification. While no early Chinese thinker questioned the need for
autocratic rule as an instrument of unification, philosophers differed
on whether and how the ruler ought to consider moral limitations on
power, traditional religious ceremonies and obligations, and the
welfare of his subjects.
Into the philosophical gap created by a lack of political unity and increasing social mobility stepped members of the
shi (“retainer”
or “knight”) class, from which both Confucius and Mencius arose. As
feudal lords were defeated and disenfranchised in battle and the kings
of the various warring states began to rely on appointed administrators
rather than vassals to govern their territories, these
shi
became lordless anachronisms and fell into genteel poverty and
itinerancy. Their knowledge of aristocratic traditions, however, helped
them remain valuable to competing kings, who wished to learn how to
regain the unity imposed by the Zhou and who sought to emulate the Zhou
by patterning court rituals and other institutions after those of the
fallen dynasty.
Thus, a new role for
shi as itinerant antiquarians emerged. In such roles,
shi
found themselves in and out of office as the fortunes of various
patron states ebbed and flowed. Mencius’ office in the state of Qi
probably was no more than an honorary title. While out of office,
veteran
shi might gather small circles of disciples – young men from
shi
backgrounds who wished to succeed in public life – and seek audiences
with rulers who might give them an opportunity to put their ideas into
practice. The text of the
Mencius claims to record Mencius’ teachings to his disciples as well as his dialogues with the philosophers and rulers of his day.
The Mencius of the Text
Mencius inherits from Confucius a set of terms and a series of
problems. In general, one can say that where Confucius saw a unity of
inner and outer – in terms of
li (ritual propriety),
ren (co-humanity), and the
junzi (profound person)-
xiaoren
(small person) distinction – Mencius tends to privilege the inner
aspects of concepts, practices, and identities. For Mencius, the locus
of philosophical activity and self-cultivation is the
xin (
hsin),
a term that denotes both the chief organ of the circulatory system and
the organ of thought, and hence is translated here and in many other
sources as “heart-mind.” Mencius’ views of the divine, political
organization, human nature, and the path toward personal development
all start and end in the heart-mind.
Mencius’ philosophical concerns, while scattered across the seven
books of the text that bears his name, demonstrate a high degree of
consistency unusual in early Chinese philosophical writing. They can be
categorized into four groups:
- Theodicy
- Government
- Human Nature
- Self-Cultivation
Theodicy
Again, as with Confucius, so too with Mencius. From late Zhou
tradition, Mencius inherited a great many religious sensibilities,
including theistic ones. For the early Chinese (c. 16
th century BCE), the world was controlled by an all-powerful deity, “The Lord on High” (
Shangdi),
to whom entreaties were made in the first known Chinese texts,
inscriptions found on animal bones offered in divinatory sacrifice. As
the Zhou polity emerged and triumphed over the previous Shang tribal
rule, Zhou apologists began to regard their deity,
Tian (“Sky” or “Heaven”) as synonymous with
Shangdi,
the deity of the deposed Shang kings, and explained the decline of
Shang and the rise of Zhou as a consequence of a change in
Tianming
(“the mandate of Heaven”). Thus, theistic justifications for conquest
and rulership were present very early in Chinese history.
By the time of Mencius, the concept of
Tian appears to have changed slightly, taking on aspects of “fate” and “nature” as well as “deity.” For Confucius,
Tian provided
personal support and sanction for his sense of historical mission,
while at the same time prompting Job-like anxiety during moments of ill
fortune in which
Tian seemed to have abandoned him. Mencius’ faith in
Tian as the ultimate source of legitimate moral and political authority is unshakeable. Like Confucius, he says that “
Tian does not speak – it simply reveals through deeds and affairs” (5A5). He ascribes the virtues of
ren (co-humanity),
yi (rightness),
li (ritual propriety),
zhi (wisdom), and
sheng (sagehood) to
Tian (7B24) and explicitly compares the rule of the moral king to the rule of
Tian (5A4).
Mencius thus shares with Confucius three assumptions about Tian as
an extrahuman, absolute power in the universe: (1) its alignment with
moral goodness, (2) its dependence on human agents to actualize its
will, and (3) the variable, unpredictable nature of its associations
with mortal actors. To the extent that Mencius is concerned with
justifying the ways of
Tian to humanity, he tends to do so without questioning these three assumptions about the nature of
Tian, which are rooted deep in the Chinese past, as his views on government, human nature, and self-cultivation will show.
Government
The dependence of
Tian upon human agents to put its will
into practice helps account for the emphasis Mencius places on the
satisfaction of the people as an indicator of the ruler’s moral right to
power, and on the responsibility of morally-minded ministers to depose
an unworthy ruler. In a dialogue with King Xuan of Qi (r. 319-301
BCE), Mencius says:
The people are to be valued most, the altars of the
grain and the land [traditional symbols of the vitality of the state]
next, the ruler least. Hence winning the favor of the common people you
become Emperor…. (7B14)
When the ruler makes a serious mistake they admonish. If after
repeated admonishments he still will not listen, they depose him…. Do
not think it strange, Your Majesty. Your Majesty asked his servant a
question, and his servant dares not fail to answer it directly. (5B9)
Mencius’ replies to King Xuan are bracingly direct, in fact, but he
can be coy. When the king asks whether it is true that various sage
kings (Tang and Wu) rebelled against and murdered their predecessors
(Jie and Zhou), Mencius answers that it is true. The king then asks:
“Is it permissible for a vassal to murder his lord?”
Mencius replied, “One who robs co-humanity [ren] you call a
`robber’; one who robs the right [yi] you call a `wrecker’; and one who
robs and wrecks you call an `outlaw.’ I have heard that [Wu] punished
the outlaw Zhou – I have not heard that he murdered his lord. (1B8)
In other words, Wu was morally justified in executing Zhou, because
Zhou had proven himself to be unworthy of the throne through his
offenses against
ren and
yi – the very qualities associated with the Confucian exemplar (
junzi) and his actions. This is an example of Mencius engaging in the “rectification of names” (
zhengming), an exercise that Confucius considered to be prior to all other philosophical activity (
Analects 13.3).
While Mencius endorses a “right of revolution,” he is no democrat.
His ideal ruler is the sage-king, such as the legendary Shun, on whose
reign both divine sanction and popular approval conferred legitimacy:
When he was put in charge of sacrifices, the hundred
gods delighted in them which is Heaven accepting him. When he was put
in charge of affairs, the affairs were in order and the people
satisfied with him, which is the people accepting him. Heaven gave it
[the state] to him; human beings gave it to him. (5A5)
Mencius proposes various economic plans to his monarchical
audiences, but while he insists on particular strategies (such as
dividing the land into five-acre settlements planted with mulberry
trees), he rejects the notion that one should commit to an action
primarily on the grounds that it will benefit one, the state, or
anything else. What matters about actions is whether they are moral or
not; the question of their benefit or cost is beside the point. Here,
Mencius reveals his antipathy for – and competition with – philosophers
who followed Mozi, a fifth-century BCE contemporary of Confucius who
propounded a utilitarian theory of value based on
li (benefit):
Why must Your Majesty say “benefit” [li]? I have only the co-humane [ren] and the right [yi]. (1A1)
In the end, Mencius is committed to a type of benevolent
dictatorship, which puts moral value before pragmatic value and in this
way seeks to benefit both ruler and subjects. The sage-kings of
antiquity are a model, but one cannot simply adopt their customs and
institutions and expect to govern effectively (4A1). Instead, one must
emulate the sage-kings both in terms of outer structures (good laws,
wise policies, correct rituals) and in terms of inner motivations
(placing
ren and
yi first). Like Confucius, Mencius
places an enormous amount of confidence in the capacity of the ordinary
person to respond to an extraordinary ruler, so as to put the world in
order. The question is, how does Mencius account for this optimism in
light of human nature?
Human Nature
Mencius is famous for claiming that human nature (
renxing)
is good. As with most reductions of philosophical positions to
bumper-sticker slogans, this statement oversimplifies Mencius’
position. In the text, Mencius takes a more careful route in order to
arrive at this view. Following A. C. Graham, one can see his argument
as having three elements: (1) a teleology, (2) a virtue theory, and (3)
a moral psychology.
Teleology
Mencius’ basic assertion is that “everyone has a heart-mind which
feels for others.” (2A6) As evidence, he makes two appeals: to
experience, and to reason. Appealing to experience, he says:
Supposing people see a child fall into a well – they all
have a heart-mind that is shocked and sympathetic. It is not for the
sake of being on good terms with the child’s parents, and it is not for
the sake of winning praise for neighbors and friends, nor is it because
they dislike the child’s noisy cry. (2A6)
It is important to point out here that Mencius says nothing about
acting on this automatic affective-cognitive response to suffering that
he ascribes to the bystanders at the well tragedy. It is merely the
feeling that counts. Going further and appealing to reason, Mencius
argues:
Judging by this, without a heart-mind that sympathizes
one is not human; without a heart-mind aware of shame, one is not
human; without a heart-mind that defers to others, one is not human;
and without a heart-mind that approves and condemns, one is not human. (2A6)
Thus, Mencius makes an assertion about human beings – all have a
heart-mind that feels for others – and qualifies his assertion with
appeals to common experience and logical argument. This does little to
distinguish him from other early Chinese thinkers, who also noticed
that human beings were capable of altruism as well as selfishness. What
remains is for him to explain why other thinkers are incorrect when
they ascribe positive evil to human nature – that human beings are such
that they actively seek to do wrong.
Virtue Theory
Mencius goes further and identifies the four basic qualities of the
heart-mind (sympathy, shame, deference, judgment) not only as
distinguishing characteristics of human beings – what makes the human
being
qua human being really human – but also as the “sprouts” (
duan) of the four cardinal virtues:
A heart-mind that sympathizes is the sprout of
co-humanity [ren]; a heart-mind that is aware of shame is the sprout of
rightness [yi]; a heart-mind that defers to others is the sprout of
ritual propriety [li]; a heart-mind that approves and condemns is the
sprout of wisdom [zhi]…. If anyone having the four sprouts within
himself knows how to develop them to the full, it is like fire catching
alight, or a spring as it first bursts through. If able to develop
them, he is able to protect the entire world; if unable, he is unable
to serve even his parents. (2A6)
Now the complexity of Mencius’ seemingly simplistic position becomes
clearer. What makes us human is our feelings of commiseration for
others’ suffering; what makes us virtuous – or, in Confucian parlance,
junzi
– is our development of this inner potential. To paraphrase Irene Bloom
on this point, there is no sharp conflict between “nature” and
“nurture” in Mencius; biology and culture are co-dependent upon one
another in the development of the virtues. If our sprouts are left
untended, we can be no more than merely human – feeling sorrow at the
suffering of another, but unable or unwilling to do anything about it.
If we tend our sprouts assiduously — through education in the classical
texts, formation by ritual propriety, fulfillment of social norms,
etc. – we can not only avert the suffering of a few children in some
wells, but also bring about peace and justice in the entire world. This
is the basis of Mencius’ appeal to King Hui of Liang (r. 370-319 BCE):
[The king] asked abruptly, “How shall the world be settled?”
“It will be settled by unification,” I [Mencius] answered.
“Who will be able to unify it?”
“Someone without a taste for killing will be able to unify it…. Has
Your Majesty noticed rice shoots? If there is drought during the
seventh and eighth months, the shoots wither, but if dense clouds
gather in the sky and a torrent of rain falls, the shoots suddenly
revive. When that happens, who could stop it? … Should there be one
without a taste for killing, the people will crane their necks looking
out for him. If that does happen, the people will go over to him as
water tends downwards, in a torrent – who could stop it? (1A6)
Mencius devotes some energy to arguing that “rightness” (
yi)
is internal, rather than external, to human beings. He does so using
examples taken from that quintessentially Confucian arena of human
relations, filial piety (
xiao). Comparing the rightness that
manifests itself in filial piety to such visceral activities as eating,
drinking, and sexual intercourse, Mencius points out that, just as
one’s attraction or repulsion regarding these activities is determined
by one’s internal orientation (hunger, thirst, lust), one’s filial
behavior is determined by one’s inner attitudes, as the following
imaginary dialogue with one of his opponents shows:
[Ask the opponent] “Which do you respect, your uncle or
your younger brother?” He will say, “My uncle.” “When your younger
brother is impersonating an ancestor at a sacrifice, then which do you
respect?” He will say, “My younger brother.” You ask him, “What has
happened to your respect for your uncle?” He will say, “It is because
of the position my younger brother occupies.” (6A5)
In other words, the rightness that one manifests in filial piety is
not dependent on fixed, external categories, such as the status of
one’s younger brother
qua younger brother or one’s uncle
qua
one’s uncle. If it were, one always would show respect to one’s uncle
and never to one’s younger brother or anyone else junior to oneself.
But as it happens, shifts in external circumstances can effect changes
in status; one’s younger brother can temporarily assume the status of a
very senior ancestor in the proper ritual context, thus earning the
respect ordinarily given to seniors and never shown to juniors. For
Mencius, this demonstrates that the internal orientation of the agent
(e.g., rightness) determines the moral value of given behaviors (e.g.,
filial piety).
Having made a teleological argument from the inborn potential of
human beings to the presumption of virtues that can be developed,
Mencius then offers his sketch of moral psychology – the structures
within the human person that make such potential identifiable and such
development possible.
Moral Psychology
The primary function of Mencius’ moral psychology is to explain how
moral failure is possible and how it can be avoided. As Antonio S. Cua
has noted, for Mencius, moral failure is the failure to develop one’s
xin (heart-mind). In order to account for the moral mechanics of the
xin, Mencius offers a quasi-physiological theory involving
qi
(vital energy) – “a hard thing to speak about” (2A2), part vapor, part
fluid, found in the atmosphere and in the human body, that regulates
affective-cognitive processes as well as one’s general well-being. It
is especially abundant outdoors at night and in the early morning,
which is why taking fresh air at these times can act as a physical and
spiritual tonic (6A8). When Mencius is asked about his personal
strengths, he says:
I know how to speak, and I am good at nourishing my flood-like qi
. (2A2)
It is interesting to note the apparent link between powers of suasion – essential for any itinerant Warring States
shi, whether official or teacher – and “flood-like
qi.” The goal of Mencian self-cultivation is to bring one’s
qi,
xin, and
yan (words) together in a seamless blend of rightness (
yi) and ritual propriety (
li). Mencius goes on to describe what he means by “flood-like
qi“:
It is the sort of qi that is utmost in vastness, utmost
in firmness. If, by uprightness, you nourish it and do not interfere
with it, it fills the space between Heaven and Earth. It is the sort of
qi that matches the right [yi] with the Way [Dao]; without these, it
starves. It is generated by the accumulation of right [yi] – one cannot
attain it by sporadic righteousness. If anything one does fails to meet
the standards of one’s heart-mind, it starves. (2A2)
It is here that Mencius is at his most mystical, and recent
scholarship has suggested that he and his disciples may have practiced a
form of meditative discipline akin to
yoga. Certainly, similar-sounding spiritual exercises are described in other early Chinese texts, such as the
Neiye (“Inner Training”) chapter of the
Guanzi (
Kuan-tzu, c. 4
th-2
nd
centuries BCE). It also is at this point that Mencius seems to depart
most radically from what is known about the historical Confucius’
teachings. While faint glimpses of what may be ascetic and meditative
disciplines sometimes appear in the
Analects, nowhere in the text are there detailed discussions of nurturing one’s
qi such as can be found in
Mencius 2A2.
In spite of the mystical tone of this passage, however, all that the text really says is that
qi can be nurtured through regular acts of “rightness” (
yi). It goes on to say that
qi flows from one’s
xin (2A2), that one’s
xin must undergo great discipline in order to produce “flood-like
qi” (6B15), and that a well-developed
xin will manifest itself in radiance that shines from one’s
qi
into one’s face and general appearance (7A21). In short, here is where
Mencius’ case for human nature seems to leave philosophy and reasoned
argumentation behind and step into the world of ineffability and
religious experience. There is no reason, of course, why Mencius
shouldn’t take this step; as Alan K. L. Chan has pointed out, ethics
and spirituality are not mutually exclusive, either in the
Mencius or elsewhere.
To sum up, both biology and culture are important for Mencian self-cultivation, and so is
Tian.
“By fully developing one’s heart-mind, one knows one’s nature, and by
knowing one’s nature, one knows Heaven.” (7A1) One cannot help but
begin with “a heart-mind that feels for others,” but the journey toward
full humanity is hardly complete without having taken any steps beyond
one’s birth. Guided by the examples of ancient sages and the ritual
forms and texts they have left behind, one starts to develop one’s
heart-mind further by nurturing its
qi through habitually
doing what is right, cultivating its “sprouts” into virtues, and
bringing oneself up and out from the merely human to that which
Tian
intends for one, which is to become a sage. Nature is crucial, but so
is nurture. Mencius’ model of moral psychology is both a “discovery”
model (human nature is good) and a “development” model (human nature
can be made even better):
A person’s surroundings transform his qi just as the food he eats changes his body. (7A36)
Key Interpreters of Mencius
Detailed discussion of Mencius’ key interpreters is best reserved
for an article on Confucian philosophy. Nonetheless, an outline of the
most important commentators and their philosophical trajectories is
worth including here.
The two best known early interpreters of Mencius’ thought – besides the compilers of the
Mencius
themselves – are the Warring States philosophers Gaozi (Kao-tzu, 300s
BCE) and Xunzi (Hsun-tzu, 310-220 BCE). Gaozi, who is known only from
the
Mencius, evidently knew Mencius personally, but Xunzi knew
him only retrospectively. Both disagreed with Mencius’ views on human
nature.
Gaozi’s dialogue with Mencius on human nature can be found in book six of the
Mencius,
in which both Mencius’ disciples and Gaozi himself question him on his
points of disagreement with Gaozi. Gaozi – whom later Confucians
identified, probably anachronistically, as a Daoist — offers multiple
hypotheses about human nature, each of which Mencius refutes in
Socratic fashion. Gaozi first argues that human nature is neither bad
nor good, and presents two organic metaphors for its moral neutrality:
wood (which can be carved into any object) and water (which can be made
to flow east or west).
Challenging the carved wood metaphor, Mencius points out that in
carving wood into a cup or bowl, one violates the wood’s nature, which
is to become a tree. Does one then violate a human being’s nature by
training him to be good? No, he says, it is possible to violate a human
being’s nature by making him bad, but his nature is to become good. As
for the water metaphor, Mencius rejects it by remarking that human
nature flows to the good, just as water’s nature flows down. It is
possible to make people bad, just as it is possible to make water flow
up – but neither is a natural process or end. “Although man can be made
to become bad, his nature remains as it was.” (6A2)
Like Mencius, Xunzi claims to interpret Confucius’ thought
authentically, but leavens it with his own contributions. While neither
Gaozi nor Mencius is willing to entertain the notion that human beings
might originally be evil, this is the cornerstone of Xunzi’s position
on human nature. Against Mencius, Xunzi defines human nature as what is
inborn and unlearned, and then asks why education and ritual are
necessary for Mencius if people really are good by nature. Whereas
Mencius claims that human beings are originally good but argues for the
necessity of self-cultivation, Xunzi claims that human beings are
originally bad but argues that they can be reformed, even perfected,
through self-cultivation. Also like Mencius, Xunzi sees
li as the key to the cultivation of
renxing.
Although Xunzi condemns Mencius’ arguments in no uncertain terms,
when one has risen above the smoke and din of the fray, one may see that
the two thinkers share many assumptions, including one that links each
to Confucius: the assumption that human beings can be transformed by
participation in traditional aesthetic, moral, and social disciplines.
(Gaozi’s metaphor of carved wood, incidentally, is one of Xunzi’s
favorites.) Through an accident of history, Mencius had no occasion to
meet Xunzi and thus no opportunity to refute his arguments, but if he
had, he might have replied that Xunzi cannot truly believe in the
original depravity of human beings, or else he could not place such
great faith in the morally-transformative power of culture.
Later interpreters of Mencius’ thought between the Tang and Ming dynasties are often grouped together under the label of “
Neo-Confucianism.”
This term has no cognate in classical Chinese, but is useful insofar
as it unites several thinkers from disparate eras who share common
themes and concerns. Thinkers such as
Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai, 1020-1077 CE), Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200 CE) and
Wang Yangming
(1472-1529 CE), while distinct from one another, agree on the primacy
of Confucius as the fountainhead of the Confucian tradition, share
Mencius’ understanding of human beings as innately good, and revere the
Mencius as one of the “Four Books” — authoritative textual
sources for standards of ritual, moral, and social propriety. Zhang
Zai’s interest in
qi as the unifier of all things surely must have been stimulated by Mencius’ theories, while Wang Yangming’s search for
li (cosmic order or principle) in the heart-mind evokes
Mencius 6A7: “What do all heart-minds have in common?
Li [cosmic order] and
yi
[rightness].” Both thinkers also display a bent toward the cosmological
and metaphysical which disposes them toward the mysticism of
Mencius 2A2,
and betrays the influence of Buddhism (of which Mencius knew nothing)
and Daoism (of which Mencius indicates little knowledge) on their
thought.
During the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty (1644-1911 CE), late Confucian
thinkers such as Dai Zhen (Tai Chen, 1724-1777 CE) developed critiques
of Xunzi that aimed at the vindication of Mencius’ position on human
nature. Kwong-loi Shun has pointed out that Dai Zhen’s defense of
Mencius actually owes more to Xunzi than to Mencius, particularly in
regard to how Dai Zhen sees one’s heart-mind as learning to appreciate
li (cosmic order) and
yi
(rightness), rather than naturally taking pleasure in such things, as
Mencius would have it. Although Dai Zhen shares Mencius’ view of the
centrality of the heart-mind in moral development, in the end, he does
not ascribe to the heart-mind the same kind of ethical directionality
that Mencius finds there.
More recently, the philosophers Roger Ames and Donald Munro have
developed postmodern readings of Mencius that involve contemporary
developments such as process thought and evolutionary psychology.
Although their philosophical points of departure differ, both Ames and
Munro share a distaste for the prominence of
Tian in Mencius’
thought, and each seeks in his own way to separate the “essence” of
Mencian thought from the “dross.” For Ames, the “essence” – although,
as a postmodern thinker, he rejects any notion of “essentialism” – is
Mencius’ “process” model of human nature and the cosmos, while the
“dross” is Mencius’ understanding of
Tian as transcendent,
which (in Ames’ reading) undermines human agency. For Munro, the
“essence” is Mencius’ grounding ethics in inborn nature, while the
“dross” is Mencius’ appeals to
Tian as the author of that
inborn nature. Their work is an attempt to make Mencius not only
intelligible, but also valuable, to contemporary Westerners. At the
same time, critics have noted that much of the authentic Mencius may be
discarded on the cutting room floor in this process of reclaiming him
for contemporary minds. One thinks of David Nivison’s warning to
philosophers, past and present, not to indulge in “wishful thinking”
and excise or explain away what one does not wish to see in the
Mencius.
This cursory review of some important interpreters of Mencius’
thought illustrates a principle that ought to be followed by all who
seek to understanding Mencius’ philosophical views: suspicion of the
sources. Almost all of our sources for reconstructing Mencius’ views
postdate him or come from a hand other than his own, and thus all
should be used with caution and with an eye toward possible influences
from outside of fourth century BCE China.
Sun Wu (simplified Chinese:
traditional
Chinese: pinyin:), style name Changqing,
better known as Sun Tzu or Sunzi (simplified Chinese: traditional Chinese: pinyin:
Sūnzǐ; pronounced [swə́n tsɨ̀]), was an ancient Chinese military general,
strategist and philosopher who is traditionally believed, and who is most
likely, to have authored The Art of War,
an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy.
Sun Tzu has had a significant impact on Chinese and Asian history and culture, both as an
author of The Art of War and through legend. During the 19th and 20th
centuries, Sun Tzu's The Art of War grew in popularity and saw practical
use in Western society,
and his work has continued to influence both Asian and Western culture and
politics.
The Art of War (simplified Chinese:
traditional
Chinese: pinyin: Sūnzǐ Bīng Fǎ) is attributed to Sun
Tzu. It presents a philosophy
of war for managing conflicts and winning battles. Some modern
scholars believe that, contrary to popular belief, it contains not only the
writings of the original author, but also commentary and clarifications from
later military philosophers, such as Li Quan and Du Mu. It is accepted as a masterpiece on
strategy and frequently cited and referred to by generals and theorists since
it was first published, translated, and distributed internationally. There are
numerous theories concerning when the text was completed, and concerning the
identity of the author or authors, but archeological recoveries have proven that
the Art of War had roughly achieved its current form by at least the early Han dynasty (206
BCE – 220 CE)..Because it is impossible to prove definitively when the Art
of War was completed before this date, the differing theories concerning
the work's author(s) and date of completion are unlikely to ever be completely
resolved.
