Confucius and Mencius’ Thoughts of Governing States

Jack Zhang

Hum 103

1/6/2016

Confucius and Mencius’ Thoughts of Governing States

        Confucius and Mencius were famous thinker and educator in the Spring and Autumn period.  Their ideas had a profound impact on Chinese society, and even as far as Japan, Korea, Europe and other places. They played an important role in the history of world culture.  The relationship between Confucius and Mencius were teacher and student; also, Confucius was the pioneer of Confucian and Mencius was the successor.  Even though they are the master of Confucian culture and promoting the thought of “benevolence”, there are still big differences between them. Confucius and Mencius have different thoughts of governing states in terms of different personality and distinct views on “benevolence”.

        First of all, from the perspective of the personality of the two scholars, Confucius is more gentle and sincere, while Mencius is more cynical.  According to Riegel’s article “Confucius”, Confucius was born in the feudal state of Lu and he was the founder of Confucianism, he had to set a great example of being a gentle person.  Confucius’ gentleness related to his life experiences. He was very poor in early life, he had worked as a trumpeter and a cowboy. He was self-taught and this was the reason why he naturally developed a humble personality.  When he needed advice from elder, he always asked respectfully. He also gave a lot of useful instruction to young people tirelessly because he did not want young people going to the wrong ways. Also, forgiveness is always his credo (Riegel).  Retrieving the resource from Van Norden, unlike Confucius, Mencius lived in the warring states period of life that had a lot of attacking between vassals.  Mencius put himself and the society closely relate together, he deemed it its duty to rescue the people from misery. Mencius could not endure the bad behaviors of vassals. One of Mencius’s teaching was “no fortune shall corrupt my soul, no poverty shall dampen my will, and no power shall suppress my pride”; this teaching emphasized his heroic trait and revealed his people-oriented concept (Van).  Their personality lead different approaches of governing states.

        Second, from their point of view on “benevolence”, Confucius could be viewed as the founder of benevolence, then Mencius will be the constructor of perfecting the benevolence.  Confucius proposed the benevolence thought during Spring and Autumn period, but it was only a concept at that time (Riegel).  Upon the basic of the concept, Mencius established a theory of original goodness of human nature to make the concept more visualization. Later on, Mencius put forward the concept to “benevolent government” (Van).  From “benevolence” to “benevolent government”, it was a great leap from social morals to social politics. This leap helped better consolidating the concept of “benevolence” and implementing the concept of “benevolent government”.  Confucius’ benevolence and Mencius’ benevolent government also result in differences on political philosophy.