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Mencius: Confucius Jesus
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Mencius referred to Confucius criticizing Ran Qiu for agreeing to raise taxes. How much more would he reject those who wage war on behalf of rulers to gain land and fill the plains with the dead! Mencius called this showing the land how to devour human flesh. For Mencius, a great person retains the heart of a child. He felt that even goodness could not be used to dominate people. One can only succeed by using goodness for the welfare of the people, and one can never gain the empire without their heart-felt admiration.
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Later interpreters of Mencius' thought between the Tang and Ming dynasties are often grouped together under the label of "Neo-Confucianism." This term has no cognate in classical Chinese, but is useful insofar as it unites several thinkers from disparate eras who share common themes and concerns. Thinkers such as Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai, 1020-1077 CE), Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200 CE) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529 CE), while distinct from one another, agree on the primacy of Confucius as the fountainhead of the Confucian tradition, share Mencius' understanding of human beings as innately good, and revere the Mencius as one of the "Four Books" -- authoritative textual sources for standards of ritual, moral, and social propriety. Zhang Zai's interest in qi as the unifier of all things surely must have been stimulated by Mencius' theories, while Wang Yangming’s search for li (cosmic order or principle) in the heart-mind evokes Mencius 6A7: "What do all heart-minds have in common? Li [cosmic order] and yi [rightness]." Both thinkers ... display a bent toward the cosmological and metaphysical which disposes them toward the mysticism of Mencius 2A2, and betrays the influence of Buddhism (of which Mencius knew nothing) and Daoism (of which Mencius indicates little knowledge) on their thought.
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Mencius (... spelled Mengzi or Meng-tzu), a book of his conversations with kings of the time, is one of the Four books which form the core of orthodox Confucian thinking. In contrast to the sayings of Confucius which are short and self-contained, Mencius consists of long dialogues with extensive prose. Mencius spoke frequently and highly of the well-field system.
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Skip intro Introduction: Mencius' interpretation of Confucianism has generally been considered the orthodox version by subsequent Chinese philosophers, especially the Neo-Confucians of the Song dynasty. Mencius (... spelled Mengzi or Meng-tzu), a book of his conversations with kings of the time, is one of the Four books which form the core of orthodox Confucian thinking. In contrast to the sayings of Confucius which are short and self-contained, Mencius consists of long dialogues with extensive prose.
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The doctrine of the School of Mencius is represented most clearly in two books. One is the Doctrine of the Mean, which is believed to have been written, edited or transmitted by Tzu Ssu, the grandson of Confucius and the disciple of Tseng Tzu, the youngest disciple of Confucius. The other is the Book of Mencius, which fully develops the ideas propounded in the Doctrine of the Mean.
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Like the historical Confucius, the historical Mencius is available only through a text that, in its complete form at least, postdates his traditional lifetime (372-289 BCE). The philological controversy surrounding the date and composition of the text that bears his name is far less intense than that which surrounds the Confucian Analects.... Most scholars agree that the entire Mencius was assembled by Mencius himself and his immediate disciples, perhaps shortly after his death. The text records several encounters with various rulers during Mencius' old age, which can be dated between 323 and 314 BCE, making Mencius an active figure no later than the late fourth century BCE.
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