🌱

Mencius

Thinker of the Warring States Period, Proposer of the Confucian "Innate Goodness of Human Nature"

Those Who Ground an Idea Into a Whole System · Disciples & School-Builders

ConfucianismThe Goodness of Human NatureBenevolent Government

Who they are

Mencius (c. 372–289 BC) was a thinker of the Warring States period, the most important inheritor and developer of Confucius’s teaching, honored by later ages as the "Second Sage." He proposed the "innate goodness of human nature," holding that human beings are born with four moral sprouts (the "four beginnings") — the heart of compassion, the heart of shame, the heart of deference, and the heart of right and wrong — and that education and environment only help these good sprouts to expand and perfect themselves, rather than instilling morality from without — a stance that, with Xunzi’s "innate badness of human nature," forms an important theoretical division within Confucianism over the essence of human nature. In political philosophy he went further to propose that "the people are of highest value, the altars of state next, the ruler of least weight," holding that "benevolent government" should take the security and welfare of the people as its foundation, and that a ruler who loses his virtue and turns tyrant, forfeiting the people’s hearts, may even rightly be overthrown by his subjects ("I have heard of the execution of the tyrant Zhou, not of the murder of a sovereign") — a political thought carrying a degree of "popular sovereignty" color, quite a breakthrough in the East Asian political-philosophical tradition of monarchical absolutism.

Primary sourcesThe Mencius

Key stories

Mencius’s Mother Moves Three Times

By tradition Mencius lost his father in childhood, and his mother, to keep him from the influence of a bad environment, moved house three times — from near a graveyard to beside a marketplace, where Mencius took to imitating funerals and trading, both of which his mother thought improper, until at last she moved near a school, where Mencius began to imitate the manners of scholars, and his mother, satisfied, settled down. "Mencius’s mother moves three times" thereafter became a classic story in Chinese culture stressing the influence of environment on the education of children.

The "Goodness of Nature" Debate With Gaozi

Mencius held a famous debate with the thinker Gaozi over the essence of human nature. Gaozi held that "nature is neither good nor bad," that human nature is like rushing water, flowing east if led east and west if led west, good and bad depending entirely on later guidance; Mencius retorted that water may indeed be led east or west, but can it be led to flow uphill? Human nature’s tendency toward good is, like water’s tendency downward, an inborn natural inclination.

Relationships

Mentor

📖Confucius

Nemesis

📜Xunzi　The doctrines of innate goodness and innate badness are the most important theoretical division within Confucianism over the essence of human nature

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"Mencius’s mother moves three times" (an idiom)Still a classic story in Chinese culture stressing the influence of environment on the education of children.

Appears in

The Hundred Schools of ThoughtThe Divergence of Mencius’s "Goodness of Nature" and Xunzi’s "Badness of Nature"

⏳ Who lived at the same time as Mencius? →📖 Confucianism →🔗 Who taught whom →

← Back to Figures