Mencius

Mencius (372-289 B.C.)came to be regarded as the greatest Confucian thinker after Confucius, and his teachings have been very influential on the development of Confucian thought in the Song, Ming, Qing, and up to modern times

Mencius concerned himself entirely with political theory and political practice. He spent his life bouncing from one feudal court to another trying to find some ruler who would follow his teachings. Like Confucius and Mo Tzu before him, he was largely unsuccessful in his endeavor. In fact, China had degenerated precipitously in Mencius’s time: individual states were preying on and conquering others and the rulers of the time had no patience for what they considered prattling about the ancients and their ways. Also, rival schools, especially the Moist schools (see “Mo Tzu” below), were putting up a good fight as far as bending the ears of rulers are concerned.

As a Confucian, Mencius based his entire system of thought on the concept of jen: “humaneness,” “humanity,” “benevolence,” etc. To this basic doctrine he added the concept of “righteousness,” or “duty.”  It means that we have obligations to people that arise from social relations and social organization, not because there is some divine law mandating these obligations.

Confucius himself did not explicitly focus on the subject of human nature, while Mencius asserted the innate goodness of the individual, believing that it was society’s influence – its lack of a positive cultivating influence – that caused bad moral character. “He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature” and “the way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind”

Mencius, like Confucius, believed that rulers were divinely placed in order to guarantee peace and order among the people they rule. Unlike Confucius, Mencius believed that if a ruler failed to bring peace and order about, then the people could be absolved of all loyalty to that ruler and could, if they felt strongly enough about the matter, revolt.