Mencius, Xun Zi and Further Confucian Texts

Mencius (Meng Zi (孟子) – Master Meng) lived from around 370 BCE to around 300 BCE and reputedly studied with or under Kong’s grandson. Meng proposed the now famous idea of a Mandate of Heaven being given to a dynasty and finally removed from it in the event of serious misrule as an historical agent. This suggests that ‘good’ rule is ultimately more important to heaven in this view than family – again merit trumps connections in early Chinese philosophy even while the importance of family is not unstressed.

Meng still supported an hereditary system for the appointment of senior public servants, for example, on the basis that it promoted ministerial independence. Meng’s words and deeds, too, were collected in one volume (named for him) for posterity. Meng is reported to have addressed rulers directly with suggestions for better rule. For example he told King Hui of Wei and later of Liang, who thought he was a benevolent ruler, that he could always rule more benevolently and should attempt to do so and, somewhat enigmatically perhaps, that if he sought gain he was more likely to achieve it via selflessness than via selfishness. To King Xüan of Qi he remarked that true kingship required serious application. So there was, for him, no easy way to rule properly. He also intimated to Duke Wen of Teng that good rulers at least could expect to be supported by the ruled hinting at the intended cooperative mutuality of the relationship envisaged in the scheme of Confucianism. Mencius spoke of benevolence, sensible rule and moral setting of examples being more important than military matters.

Meng saw rule as a kind of zero-sum game in which proper material shares were a virtuous circle – a harmony – that could be disrupted, however, by the excess greed of a ruler (which might be satisfied only at the expense of some of the ruled (and perhaps also some neighbouring ruler and his subjects, too)). This harmony/greed/disharmony zero-sum ideology extended beyond examining political forms of domination to noticing problems with economic forms of misuse of hegemony.

Master Xun (荀子) is the third of the major early Confucians with his words and deeds finally collected in a written work for posterity and named for him. He lived from around 310 BCE to around 220 BCE and focused his philosophy more on the impartial nature of heaven and less on humanism or even human concerns. The key to Confucianism for him was that the orderly propitiation of heaven by the continuation of traditional ritual forms was required of everyone. At the same time, he appears to have been the Confucian most concerned with opposing superstition as he saw it. He stressed that education in the required Confucian virtues was essential to the social health and socially responsible practices to which it would inevitably lead.

The Great Learning (Da Xue – 大學) and the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong Yong –中庸) round out the greatest of the Confucian texts and continue Xun Zi’s theme of moral self-improvement via Confucian learning (I‘ll mention other major Confucian texts in a later post).