Mencius

Mencius was a Confucian thinker of the fourth century BCE who argued that human nature tends toward goodness. His teachings, preserved in the text named for him, shaped later Confucian ethics and political thought.

Confucianism: An ethical and political tradition rooted in the teachings of Confucius and developed by later thinkers. Mencius developed Confucian ethics into a distinctive account of human nature and government.
Four beginnings: Mencius’s four innate moral tendencies: compassion, shame, deference, and approval of right and wrong. They are his clearest account of the starting points from which virtue develops.
Benevolent government: A form of rule that prioritizes the people’s welfare and governs through moral example rather than coercion. Mencius argues that humane rule gives people the conditions to live morally.
Xunzi: A Confucian philosopher of the third century BCE who argued that human nature is bad and needs transformation. Xunzi directly rejects Mencius’s account of innate goodness.
Ren (Confucianism): The Confucian virtue of humaneness, expressed through care for others and moral concern. Mencius treats humaneness as a moral sprout present in every person.
Moral cultivation: The deliberate development of ethical dispositions through reflection, practice, and learning. For Mencius, innate goodness needs cultivation to mature into stable virtue.
Mandate of Heaven: The doctrine that Heaven grants and withdraws political legitimacy according to a ruler’s conduct. Mencius uses the people’s welfare and judgment to explain when a ruler loses legitimacy.
Gaozi: A Warring States thinker whose debate with Mencius concerned whether human nature is good, bad, or morally neutral. Their exchanges expose competing interpretations of human nature in the Mencius.
Yi (Confucianism): The Confucian virtue of righteousness: acting in accordance with what is morally right. Mencius presents righteousness as an innate moral response that requires cultivation.
Moral sprouts: Mencius’s metaphor for nascent moral dispositions that can grow when properly nourished. The sprout image explains why goodness is inborn but not guaranteed to flourish.

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