earticle

영어

The philosophy of Mencius stresses the building of a moral personality based on the good human nature. Yet he differentiates between “great persons” and “inferior persons”, noble persons and common people. The difference between the two is that the noble or great persons “acquired it (the good nature)”. This proves that good nature is not a given. In order to overcome the interpretation that good nature is a given which has been overwhelmingly held since Zhu Xi proposed it, this paper focuses on the passage in the Mencius claiming that “Yao and Shun did it naturally”. It shows that for Mencius the quest to a good human nature relies on conscious effort and choice. It is not a given. The sentence “Yao and Shun did it naturally” does not mean that Yao and Shun had a good nature by birth, but that by internalizing the moral concepts of humanity and righteousness these become natural to them. By taking Yao and Shun as examples Mencius stresses the role of choice in the building of a moral personality. Yao lives in the woods among the Eastern barbarians, his moral personality is solely based on his moral choice to adhere to the values of filial piety, humanity and righteousness. This choice puts him apart from the “brute beasts (qinshou )” and from other people. From this perspective the meaning of “understanding that in life one should worry about the vices, death comes from taking comfort in pleasure” becomes clearer. For Mencius it takes an active, continued effort to realize the human potential, it is not served by indulging in the belief of an “originally good nature”.