Birth in Zou
Tradition places Meng Ke’s birth around 372 BCE in Zou, a small state next to Lu.
Confucian tradition · c. 372 – c. 289 BCE
Mencius
Cultivate the sprouts of goodness that every heart already holds.
State of Zou · ancient China
Biography
The thread of a life.
Mencius, born Meng Ke in the small state of Zou, was the most influential Confucian thinker of the Warring States period after Confucius himself. Travelling between royal courts with his disciples, he argued that human nature is good because every heart holds sprouts of compassion, shame, deference and moral judgment, and that rulers who secure their people’s livelihood and cultivate their virtue win the mandate of Heaven.
At the court of Liang
Around 320 BCE Mencius visits King Hui of Liang, who asks what will profit his state; the book opens with the reply.
Qi seizes Yan
When Qi occupies Yan in 314 BCE, Mencius urges King Xuan to heed the will of its people; he leaves Qi after the people of Yan rebel.
Death
Tradition dates Mencius’s death to around 289 BCE; disciples such as Wan Zhang and Gongsun Chou preserve his conversations.
The Four Books
In 1190 Zhu Xi prints his commentaries on the Four Books, the Mencius among them, as a single set.
An abridged Mencius
In 1394 the first Ming emperor has an edition made without the passages that rank the people above the ruler.
Understanding a life in depth
01Meng Ke of Zou
Meng Ke, later honoured as Master Meng (Mengzi) and Latinized as Mencius by Jesuit missionaries, was born around 372 BCE in Zou, a small state next to Confucius’s homeland of Lu, about a century after Confucius’s death. Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian says that he studied with disciples of Zisi, Confucius’s grandson. Later tradition, notably Liu Xiang’s Biographies of Exemplary Women, credits his mother with moving house three times, from beside a graveyard to a market and then next to a school, and with cutting the cloth on her loom to show him what abandoning his studies meant. These stories are moral examples rather than records, but they made Mencius a model of education.
02Advising kings in an age of war
Like Confucius, Mencius travelled with his disciples in search of a ruler who would practise humane government. The book records his audiences with King Hui of Liang and his son King Xiang, with King Xuan of Qi and with Duke Wen of the small state of Teng. In Qi he held an honorary ministerial rank, yet he refused to be summoned like a servant, insisting that a worthy adviser be treated as a teacher. When Qi seized the state of Yan in 314 BCE, he urged the king to annex it only if its people welcomed the conquest; the occupation provoked revolt, and he soon left Qi. Rulers listened politely but preferred alliances, armies and administrative reform.
03Disputes with rival schools
Mencius saw himself as defending the way of Confucius against teachings that, he claimed, filled the world: the concern for oneself of Yang Zhu, who would not pluck out a single hair to benefit the world, and the impartial caring of Mozi. “Yang’s each-for-himself denies one’s ruler; Mo’s impartial caring denies one’s father,” he declared. He also argued with the agriculturalist Xu Xing, who wanted rulers to plough beside their people, and above all with Gaozi, for whom human nature was neutral raw material. Asked whether he was fond of disputation, he replied that he had no choice.
04A book that became a classic
Mencius is said to have died around 289 BCE, and the book that bears his name was probably completed by his disciples. Zhao Qi wrote its earliest surviving commentary, but for centuries the work ranked among the writings of the masters rather than the classics. Han Yu (768–824) named Mencius the last true transmitter of the Way of the sages, and Song scholars raised him further: Zhu Xi made the Mencius one of the Four Books, and in 1330 the Yuan court gave him the title Second Sage. His defence of the people could still give offence: in 1394 the first Ming emperor had an abridged edition made without the passages that limit a ruler’s authority.
Long ranked among the masters rather than the classics, the Mencius was championed by Han Yu and the Song Neo-Confucians, made one of the Four Books by Zhu Xi and memorized by examination candidates for six centuries; Mencius was honoured as the Second Sage. Wang Yangming built on his innate knowing, Dai Zhen reread him against Zhu Xi, and modern debates on moral psychology, virtue ethics and resistance to tyranny still return to his arguments.
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Linked thinkers
- Read and answered
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- Kindred questions