LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mencius: Man
built 776 days ago
Mencius (385-393 B.C.E.) held tenaciously to Confucianism in promoting class and social hierarchy as the source of order and stability in society. To Mencius the obligations are literal for both elite and those who service them, as when he cities the prerogative of the servant to ignore his lord if the lord summons him from afar using the wrong protocol. In his example, a forester refused to come to his lord when summoned with a white flag; properly speaking, he should be summoned with a skin cap. "A common man should be summoned with a plain banner; a scholar who has taken office with one having dragons embroidered on it; and a great official with one having feathers suspended from the top of the staff (5.2.7.6)."
Source:
Mencius devotes some energy to arguing that "rightness" (yi) is internal, rather than external, to human beings. He does so using examples taken from that quintessentially Confucian arena of human relations, filial piety (xiao). Comparing the rightness that manifests itself in filial piety to such visceral activities as eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse, Mencius points out that, just as one's attraction or repulsion regarding these activities is determined by one's internal orientation (hunger, thirst, lust), one's filial behavior is determined by one’s inner attitudes, as the following imaginary dialogue with one of his opponents shows:
Source:
To Mencius, the importance of the Heart lay in its ability to think. Its thinking was a special kind of thinking--an ethical thinking which established priorities, assigned values, discerned duties, and recognized obligations, “all with a sense of purpose in life--that destiny that is the Mandate of Heaven. . . Cultivating the heart is therefore the highest duty because it has the greatest moral value.” The heart is free from desire and emotions.
Source:
Mencius said: "You have not done wrong. What you did was an act of humaneness. You saw the ox, but had not seen the sheep. When it comes to animals, if the Superior Man has seen them while alive, he cannot stand to watch them die. If he hears their screams, he cannot stand to eat their meat. Therefore he stays away from the kitchen."
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Man