42 pages • 1 hour read
MenciusMencius
Nonfiction | Book | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of the Sage in Restoring Social Order
The figure of the sage occupies a crucial and recurring role in Mencius. It has no direct reference point in the contemporary Western world. As such, the sage is perhaps best understood at first through a contrast with its closest living relative: the academic philosopher. These figures, for the most part, exist in universities. Their purpose is primarily to research into, and write about, theoretical issues in philosophy, and their business is strictly separated from that of government or the goal of provoking moral or spiritual transformation. What Mencius says of the “clever” could well be directed against them. That is, “What one dislikes in the clever is that their arguments are continued” (93). In other words, they argue for the sake of arguing and about the minutia of issues that have no practical significance.
In contrast, the role of the sage, at least in Mencius, is an overtly practical and political one. He travels from court to court, visiting kings and princes, offering advice on how to run and improve the state and how to behave in a virtuous manner. The sage’s ultimate goal is the ambitious one of restoring the harmonious moral order of the way. This is why two traits are characteristic of, and prized in, the sage although they are incidental in the contemporary philosopher. Namely, to be a sage one must not only be “both wise and benevolent” but also have “excelled in rhetoric” (34). One must be skilled in rhetoric and style so as to affect change in others and to express harmony in oneself. However, one must also, for similar reasons, be a moral exemplar. The idea is that others should be inspired to moral change by the figure and example of the sage himself.
All of which makes the sage sound like a romantic and highly impressive figure. Indeed, Mencius says of the sage in connection with other men, ‘Though one of their kind/ He stands far above the crowd’ (35). Comparable almost to a figure like Jesus, but with philosophical training and acumen, the sage in general, and Confucius in particular, is elevated in Mencius almost to the status of a deity.
However, the sage also has a darker, or at least more problematic, side. Unlike Plato’s Philosopher King in the Republic (375 BCE), he harbors no ambition to rule directly, but he does benefit from the division of labor between rulers and ruled that he then seeks to justify, as seen in Book III. As adviser to the ruler, and as part of a “thinking class,” he is the beneficiary of an autocratic system. We may then question how critical he can really be of the elites who pay him. Further, there is a theoretical tension regarding the sage’s role in Mencius’s overall ideal of the social order. At one point (Book IV, Part B, Section 21), he says that the sage only emerged after the time of the true Kings ended. In that case, it is unclear whether the implication is that the sage, and his criticisms, are only needed when the social order is out of joint, or whether he remains even when social harmony has been re-established. If the former, he is in the strange position of pursuing his own redundancy.
The Ideal Harmony of “the Way”
In both form and style, Mencius is like few other philosophical texts. It is possible to make a comparison with the Socratic dialogues written by Plato, or the later dialogue form employed by Hume in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). One can also compare Mencius’s use of short passages and aphorisms with that of Nietzsche. However, the similarities are limited. Nietzsche does not employ dialogue in his writing, for a start, and the dialogue form used in Mencius is significantly different from that of Plato or Hume. In the latter cases, there is a more substantial, albeit usually contrived, debate between two antagonists, neither of whom are the author. In this book, however, both of these elements are reversed. The putative “author” is himself directly involved in the conversations. In addition, the genuinely dialogic aspect is extremely minimal and formal. That is, most of the text is Mencius delivering monologues on a series of topics, with the nominal interlocutor typically there just for the purpose of setting him up.
There is a reason behind this. In keeping with the idea of the way, Mencius seeks to replicate in its form and style the unity and harmony it looks to bring about in the world. The one-man “dialogue” serves this function well. On the one hand, it can convey a naturalness in style that is absent from a standard philosophical essay. On the other hand, by just focusing on the words of Mencius, it allows the text to maintain a clear unity of expression and authorial intent than a more genuine dialogue would risk. Further, music serves throughout the text as an appropriate metaphor for this harmony. In a critical passage from Book IV, Mencius says, “After the influence of the true King came to an end, songs were no longer composed” (92). Thus, the harmony of the old order is associated with the ideal harmony of music. By contrast, the current order of disharmony is one in which songs are no longer created. Likewise, in Book I, Chuang Pao says to Mencius that the King received him “and told me that he was fond of music. I was at a loss what to say” (15). Again, it seems like an ideal, essentially natural, unified, and harmonious order is posited behind the present discordant world of speech and dispute.
However, this ideal also contains certain tensions. These can be viewed as sources of dissonance threatening the ideal harmony of the text. Most obviously, Mencius tries to maintain the unitary interpretation of the Confucian way against various heresies. Yang Chu and Mo Ti in particular must be attacked and expunged for the heretical views of egotism and universal love. Such a gesture demonstrates the anxiety, and lack of certainty, about the Confucian legacy itself. This dissonance also operates at the level of the text. Despite the attempt to create a unified whole, reflecting a harmonious philosophy of the way, Mencius is, ironically, deeply fractured and uncertain when it comes to its own authorship. The book was written, as it turns out, by various “disciples,” and it is unclear who is composing what, and from what score.
Nature as Both Inherently Good and Chaotic
Nature is one of the most ambiguous concepts and themes within Mencius. It is also one of the most illuminating. At first glance, nature is presented in the text as essentially positive. Natural metaphors about trees, rivers, and mountains abound. Human nature is seen as morally good, and even the “air in the night” is held to have spiritually restorative properties (127). Nor is this valorization arbitrary or simply for stylistic effect. That nature, both within and outside human beings, should be good is crucial for the whole philosophy of the way. The possibility of a harmonious order, socially and individually, depends upon the idea that, allowed to develop in the right way, everything could come into sync. Conversely, that we are currently in a state of disorder is due to a falling away from, or corruption of, the original natural order.
A closer reading, however, reveals that things are more complicated. Often seemingly incidental to the main arguments are indications of another, altogether less benign, nature. On a non-human level, this view of nature is represented by “birds and beasts harmful to men” (72). We are told that a good king “drove tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses and elephants to remote parts, and the Empire rejoiced” (72). In the case of human nature, the threat is represented by barbarians. Mencius says of the “northern barbarians,” “They are without city walls, houses, ancestral temples or the sacrificial rites,” and in their land “the five grains do not grow” (141). In short, they are wild humans without civilization.
Further, Mencius uses the anxiety that the Chinese might return to the level of such people on two occasions to make an argument about how the state should be run. First, he uses it to advocate higher taxes (Book VI, Part B, section 10). Second, he employs it as part of his argument in Book III about the necessity of autocracy. Without the latter, and the division between rulers and ruled, states risked being thrown back to the social level of the barbarian. Indeed, underscoring his argument is a worry that the people are themselves a potential source of wildness. It is apparent that there is a tension in Mencius. On the one hand, a properly ordered and cultivated nature is to be embraced. On the other hand, there is a chaotic and wild nature, at the borders of civilization, from which we need protecting. Whether the two can be divided up as neatly as Mencius might like is one of the central questions of this work.
