Ambivalence of Family and Disunity of Virtues in Mencius’ Political Philosophy

1.1. The Extensionist Interpretation of Mencius

As is well known, the normative Confucian moral-political paradigm envisions a smooth transition from the personal, to the familial, to the political. Much of Mencian thought embraces this vision, as evidenced in the following passage:

Mengzi said, “People have a common saying: ‘The world, the state, the family.’ The root of the world lies in the state; the root of the state lies in the family; the root of the family lies in oneself.” (Mengzi 4A5)²

Such a view can be found throughout the Mencius. The most famous elaboration of this vision can be found in the Great Learning:

When things are investigated, knowledge is reached; when knowledge is reached, the intention is fulfilled; when the intention is fulfilled, the heartmind³ is aligned; when the heartmind is aligned, the person is cultivated; when the person is cultivated, the family is regulated; when the family is regulated, the state is put in order; and when the state is put in order, there is peace under the Heaven. (author’s translation)

This is the cultivation-regulation-governance-pacification (xiuqizhiping 修齊治平, hereafter XQZP) model of Confucian moral cultivation, familial regulation, political governance, and bringing peace and justice to all in the world. The Great Learning is generally considered a text in the Mencian “School.” In this respect, Mencius echoes other early Confucians who see a natural progression of ethical transformation from the personal, the familial, to the political, so that everybody can live in a harmonious, just, and ethically fulfilling world. This is an extraordinary accomplishment that results from a moral agent’s transformation of the domains of the personal, the familial, and the political by extending the fruits of moral cultivation from oneself to ultimately encompassing the entire world. It posits a seamless transition among these domains in that personal virtues can bring about a harmonious family, which in turn can lead to a well-governed state, and eventually bring about a peaceful and just world. This is a clear example of what I call the extensionist vision, long celebrated and enshrined as normative in classical Confucian moral-political philosophy.

One of the most famous and celebrated passages in the Mencius (1A7) has the master using the example of a king’s pity toward an ox on its way to being sacrificed to show that if the king is capable of benevolence toward an ox he is certainly able to extend that benevolence (tui en 推恩) toward the people under his rule. David S. Nivison connects the use of tui in the Mencius to Mohist sources:

The expression tui en, literally “pushing out compassion,” has a limited use among later Confucians, but the word tui 推 alone is an important technical term for the later Mohist dialecticians, and there can be little doubt that Mencius here is consciously appropriating that use. It is defined in chapter 45 of the Mozi: Extending (tui) is getting someone to grant what that person has not accepted when it is the same as something that that person does accept. (Nivison 1996, 96)

Within normative Confucian political philosophy, family has almost always been treated as a necessary domain in the concentric⁴ circle of extension, from the self, to the family, to the state, and eventually to the entire world. The Mencius contains many other passages that adopt such an approach. Mencius advocates the idea that the familial virtues of reverence toward one’s parents and elders cultivated at home can be developed into the political virtues of ren 仁 and yi 義 by extending the familial virtues to encompassing all in the world. In the commentary on Mengzi 7A15 accompanying his translation, Bryan Van Norden observes:

This is Mengzi’s philosophy of ethical cultivation in a nutshell. We are born with incipient tendencies toward benevolence and righteousness, which we must “extend” so that they reach all other relevantly similar cases. That is, we must feel compassion not only for our own parents but also for the parents of others. We must revere not only the elders of our family but also the elders of others. (Van Norden 2008, 175)

Indeed, this has been the dominant interpretation of the Mencian, and the broader Confucian, moral-political project which connects Mencius’ ideas of human nature, family relationships, and political governance grounded in the ruler’s benevolence (renzheng 仁政).

However, Mencius’s thought is a lot more complex–some might say more strained–than what Confucian orthodoxy has portrayed. More specifically, according to the Confucian XQZP ideal, the familial domain constitutes the necessary link between the personal and the political domains; but if this were indeed the case, it is rather curious that Mencius rarely appeals to the familial virtues of filial piety and brotherly deference in his conversations with various kings in his effort to promote the idea of benevolent governance. Rather, what is being extended to the world is the sympathy shown to an animal about to be sacrificed or an unknown child in danger, without necessarily going through the familial route, in his celebrated discussions on human nature with several rulers. In other words, the seed of benevolence in Mencius’ thought is most prominently represented by the king’s sympathy toward a sacrificial ox or our instinctive sense of compassion toward a vulnerable child who is a stranger to us (burenzhixin 不忍之心), instead of our familial sentiments toward parents and siblings (xiaoti 孝悌).

If so, this means that the role of familial virtues in Mencian political philosophy is rather ambiguous in that it does not necessarily occupy a central role in it as has been almost universally assumed. Chad Hansen might be onto something when he points out that

Mencius. . . does give lip service to filial piety. He shows his awareness that filial piety is a core virtue in the dao of the sage-kings. Still, filial piety plays no central theoretical role for Mencius. (Hansen 1992, 169)

Indeed, the role of familial virtues in Mencius’ thought is not quite as straight-forward as portrayed in the Confucian orthodoxy. This explains Hansen’s dismissiveness of a central theoretical role filial piety plays in Mencius’ thought. However, such dismissiveness does not do justice to the theoretical agony Mencius finds himself in. Hansen is right to problematize the role of filial piety in Mencius’ thought against the prevailing scholarly interpretations, but I do not agree with his conclusion. What Hansen should have concluded from his observation is that filial piety does not play a central role in Mencius’ political thought, but it does not necessarily mean that filial piety plays no central role in Mencius’ overall moral project. As we will see in the following, despite his own denial, Mengzi’s philosophy does operate on the premise of two roots when it comes to the source of moral perfection, but this two-roots problem in Mencius’ thought is different from Nivison’s analysis. The two roots are family-based virtues and natural sympathy.

1.2. Two Moral Roots: Buren 不忍, Qin 親 and Their Relationships with Ren 仁

In his famous article, “Motivation and Moral Action in Mencius,” Nivison presents a highly nuanced analysis of Mencius’ philosophy concerning the source(s) of morality.⁵ In this paper, Nivison approaches the problem of the source(s) of morality from the perspective of moral motivation in Mencius’ philosophy. He sets out to answer this question: “Is the theory of extending basic dispositions compatible with any moral code that anyone may think up?” (Nivison 1996, 101). In other words, “how is the moral ‘deep structure’ of self-revealing affections and motivations articulated into the ‘surface structure’ of developed morality” (1996, 101)? To address the tension between the two domains, Nivison argues that “we would have to think of morality as having two sources, one formal and public, set out in words and doctrines, which one would have to learn; and the other motivational but relatively amorphous, ‘inside’ ourselves so to speak, or we might say in our ‘hearts’” (1996, 102). Even though Nivison takes very seriously Mencius’ own rejection of two-roots view he accuses the Mohists of harboring, Nivison seems unconvinced Mencius’ single-root position can be defended.⁶ In the following, I will offer a somewhat different interpretation of the two-roots problem which can hopefully better capture the theoretical conundrum Mencius is in. However, unlike Nivison I will not approach this problem from the perspective of moral motivation. Rather, my focus will be on the very structure of Mencius’ moral-political philosophy, specifically the relationship between the familial and the political.

Mencius is known to draw a hard line separating what is morally required within the family from what is morally required outside of it. When he talks about the familial, more often than not, his focus seems to be on its limitations rather than its universalizability. Mencius devotes a great deal of effort to defending familial sentiments and virtues precisely because of their limited nature, not in spite of it. This is especially noteworthy in 3A5 where Mencius criticizes a Mohist, Yi Zhi 夷之, who makes lavish funeral arrangements for his own parents despite the Mohist teaching of impartial care as well as its teaching against lavish burial practices. Yi Zhi tries to defend what he did by appealing to a Confucian teaching:

Yi Zhi said, “According to the Way of the Confucians, the ancients treated the people ‘like caring for a baby.’ What does this saying mean? I take it to mean that love is without differentiations, but it is bestowed beginning with one’s parents.” (Mengzi 3A5)

Mencius calls him out on a blatant inconsistency in Yi Zhi’s behavior and his interpretation of Mohist teachings. That is, when it comes to the treatment of his own family, Yi Zhi appeals to the Confucian teaching despite his Mohist commitment. For Mencius, the Mohists posit a moral ideal they themselves cannot practically commit to. Furthermore, as Mencius muses, “Does Yi Zhi truly hold that one’s affection for one’s own nephew is like one’s affection for a neighbor’s baby?” (Mengzi 3A5). Here Mencius seems rather incredulous that anybody can seriously commit to a position that blurs the boundary between the familial and the nonfamilial. He is drawing a sharp line separating the two domains, implying that what the Mohists advocate is inhuman as it crosses that very line.

Mencius 3A5 has been commented on by many contemporary scholars, due to the fact that it is one of few cases we can find a direct (or almost direct) engagement between Mencius and a Mohist wherein the line between Confucianism and Mohism is sharply drawn, by a Confucian in this case. However, there has also been a good deal of ambiguity as to what exactly transpires in this engagement, especially pertaining to the discussion about moral roots in the following key sentence: “Heaven, in giving birth to things, causes them to have one source, but Yi Zhi gives them two sources” (天之生物也, 使之一本, 而夷子二本故也. Mengzi 3A5). The prevailing interpretation, represented by Nivison, argues that Mencius is making a case for the one source of love that can be extended to encompassing others, with natural gradations of intensity of love,⁷ although Nivison is also ambivalent about this as we have seen previously. In the following, I will sketch out a somewhat different interpretation of the two-roots problem, making the case that Mencius’ operative position can be understood to be more two-rooted than he himself might have realized, if the roots can be understood in light of the familial and political domains within which moral sentiments are expressed.

As Mencius sees it, what distinguishes the familial from the nonfamilial is their different underlying sentiments. In this connection, Mencius differentiates two kinds of sentiments, namely buren 不忍 and qin 親, and connects both with the virtue of ren 仁 in intriguingly different ways. Buren, translated as “cannot bear,” is a universal sentiment celebrated in the Mencius that is directed indiscriminately toward any person or even an animal that is in imminent danger or is suffering. There are two famous instances of buren in the text: one appears when Mencius describes a king’s sympathetic response to an ox that is about to be sacrificed (1A7) and the other has to do with our spontaneous response to a baby who is on the verge of falling into a well (2A6). Both are connected with Mencius’ discussion of moral inclinations, or moral sprouts (duan 端), that are constitutive of hu man nature (xing 性). In such cases, Mencius connects the sprout of buren with the virtue of benevolence, ren, regarding the latter as the result of extending the former to encompassing all (Mencius 1A7, 2B6, 7B31, etc.).

On the other hand, benevolence also has a distinctly familial dimension, qin. Qin usually means parents (as in shiqin 事親) or filiality toward parents (as in qinqin 親親) in the Mencius, but it also refers to familial affection on several occasions. In fact, Mencius considers treating one’s parents as parents as a case of benevolence (親親, 仁也. Mengzi 7A15). In another passage, Mencius says:

The core of benevolence is serving one’s parents. The core of righteousness is obeying one’s elder brother. The core of wisdom is knowing these two and not abandoning them. The core of ritual propriety is the adornment of these two. The core of music is to delight in these two. (Mengzi 4A27)

What is especially interesting about 4A27 is that the foundational Mencian virtues of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom (with the appreciation of music added to the list) are addressed entirely within the familial context, which is different from the universalist perspective discussed earlier. In fact, here the familial dimension is treated as the core of the virtue of benevolence and others. This means that Mencius sees two dimensions in the manifestation of cardinal virtues of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom, namely the universal and the familial. For example, ren can be understood in terms of both the extension of the universalist buren to all (人皆有所不忍, 達之於其所忍, 仁也. Mengzi 7B31) and of serving one’s parents (仁之實, 事親是也. Mengzi 4A27; 親親, 仁也. Mengzi 7A15). However, 7A15 actually presents some exegetical problem for our purpose here in a way that might not be immediately obvious:

Treating one’s parents as parents is benevolence (ren). Revering one’s elders is righteousness. There is nothing else to do but extend these to the world. (Mengzi 7A15)

On its face, Mencius seems to be saying that a sage-king should extend the practice of treating parents as parents and treating elders as elders to all under the Heaven, but it is unclear what is exactly being extended. Many within the Confucian tradition treat filial piety and political loyalty as transferrable, making family the training/nurturing ground for political virtues. We can see this interpretation very clearly in Zhu Xi’s commentary on Mengzi 4A19:

If one serves one’s parents with filiality, then one’s devotion can be transferred to one’s ruler, and one’s agreeableness can be transferred to one’s elders. If one’s self is correct, then one’s family will be ordered, one’s state will be well-ruled, and the world will be at peace. (Van Norden 2008, 98-99)

However, Mencius is actually conflicted about the connection between the familial virtue of filial piety and the political virtue of benevolence. In the text, Mencius often uses the term qin 親 to demarcate the familial domain from the rest of the social world. As the following passage clearly demonstrates, qin is reserved for kin, it is not appropriate to express qin to anyone else:

Mengzi said, “Gentlemen, in relation to animals, are sparing (ai) of them, but are not benevolent (ren) toward them. In relation to the people, they are benevolent toward them, but do not treat them as kin (qin). They treat their kin as kin, and then are benevolent toward the people. They are benevolent toward the people, and then are sparing of animals.” (Mengzi 7A45)

Here Mencius is drawing a line between benevolence (ren) and familial/kinship affection (qin). If we juxtapose 7A45 with 7A15, we can make a case that the extension in 7A15 should refer to promotion of the universal practice of filiality (treating one’s parents as parents, treating one’s elders as elders), rather than the sage-king or the gentleman treating everybody as family members. In other words, the practice and promotion of filiality is itself benevolence.

To recap, Mencius’ moral philosophy operates on the premise of two distinct but related domains: the familial and the political. This is uncontroversial. However, what might be controversial is that the relationship between the two is a lot more complicated and strained than what has been commonly assumed. On the one hand, every human being has a heartmind that cannot bear the suffering of others. Buren is a universal moral sentiment that all humans are born with, even though we risk losing it with repeated violations of our humanity, as implied in the famous ox mountain allegory (Mengzi 6A8). Buren is the sprout of the virtue of benevolence (ren) in Mencius’ thought. On the other hand, however, Mencius posits another source for ren, namely the familial source. In the following passage we find Mencius saying, “Among babes in arms there are none that do not know to love their parents (aiqiqin 愛其親)” (Mengzi 7A15). This seems to suggest that filial sentiment is an inborn quality of all human beings. In the same passage, Mencius says, “treating one’s parents as parents (qinqin 親親) is benevolence (ren)” (Mengzi 7A15). That is, Mencius is pointing out that loving parents is an inborn quality whereas properly serving parents is a developed quality of a cultivated human person. The relationship between those two is actually similar in structure to that between buren 不忍 and ren 仁. Interestingly, in 7A15 Mencius seems to equate filiality (qinqin) with ren, meaning that ren has a distinct familial dimension, in addition to its political dimension. This suggests that the political and the familial are co-equal dimensions in constituting the virtue of benevolence.

Importantly, ren should never be allowed to eclipse and transcend our filial attachment. In 1A1, Mencius says, “Never have the benevolent left their parents behind” (未有仁而遺其親者也). Given the familial dimension in ren just observed, Mencius’ sentiment here is not surprising. However, since ren also has a strong political dimension, the ability of a person of ren to navigate the relationship between the familial and the political is much trickier. Even though the cited passage in 1A1 can simply mean that a benevolent person will always be filial—especially when there is no conflict between the two, e.g., if one is blessed with a great family such that a politically benevolent person can also be filial without having to sacrifice major principles in either domain—when there is conflict between the political and the familial, a decision has to be made whether to sacrifice the political or the familial. In this regard, Mencius is clearly on the side of sacrificing the political in order to save the familial.

For Mencius the familial domain is a special category in and of itself that cannot be subsumed under the political. This interpretation is in line with Mencius’ vigorous, and at times strenuous, attempt to draw a line between the familial and the nonfamilial domains. Indeed, we find the Mencius devoting a significant amount of effort to defending the special treatment of family members, usually framed as a critique of the Mohists who famously advocate impartial care for all without privileging family members.

In this connection it is rather curious that Mencius does not treat qin as one of the moral sprouts in the way buren is treated. Moreover, neither filial piety (xiao) nor brotherly deference (ti) is included in the four cardinal virtues of benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi), ritual propriety (li) and wisdom (zhi) (hereafter RYLZ) that grow out of those four moral sprouts. If RYLZ and their respective sprouts indeed represent the foundation of the Mencian moral-political project as it often has been taken to be, where does that leave familial virtues like xiao, ti, and qin within such a picture?

In the following I will offer an alternative framework that can better accommodate these competing elements in Mencian thought between the familial and the political domains in order to have a more nuanced understanding of the Mencian project. The view I will defend argues that Mencius regards the familial and the political as two distinct domains, or two roots, such that virtues in one domain do not necessarily translate into the other. I will do this through a close examination of the Shun narrative in the Mencius. The story of Shun presents the most illuminating example in the text for revealing the theoretical struggle Mencius is in, especially the problematic status of the familial domain in his political thought. In fact, nowhere is the tension between the familial and the political more poignantly portrayed than in Mencius’ depiction of Shun, due to the prominent but deeply problematic role family plays in this narrative. We will see that the Shun narrative holds an important inflection point in the Mencian moral-political project.

3.1. Incommensurability of Desirable Goods

Among classical thinkers, Mencius is probably the one with the keenest sense of tension among values and their incommensurability (不可得兼).¹¹ One of the most famous and celebrated passages in the Mencius clearly lays this out:

Fish is something I desire; bear’s paw is also something I desire. If I cannot have both, I will forsake fish and select bear’s paw. Life is something I desire; righteousness is also something I desire. If I cannot have both, I will forsake life and select righteousness. Life is something I desire, but there is something I desire more than life. Hence, I will not do just anything to obtain it. Death is something I hate, but there is something I hate more than death. Hence, there are calamities I do not avoid. (Mengzi 6A10)

In traditional Chinese cuisine, bear’s paw is a delicacy of greater value than fish. Hence faced with a choice, one would be expected to choose the more valuable one. However, for Mencius, righteousness is of a higher value than life. Therefore, when there is a conflict between life and righteousness, a cultivated moral agent would choose righteousness over life. Such a sentiment is grounded in Mencius’ observation of an interesting phenomenon that some people are willing to give up their lives in order to defend their personal dignity, e.g., at a moment of outrage when humiliated (Mengzi 6A10). While some might see such a moment as a destructive outburst of anger, Mencius sees in it a nobler impulse of righteousness. It is rather significant that Mencius sets up a binary between righteousness and life in the above passage. This points to the particular way righteousness is used in the text.

Another important occurrence of righteousness appears at the very beginning of the Mencius (1A1). There we find Mencius forcefully arguing that a ruler should be concerned with righteousness, instead of benefits (li 利), in governing the state. In so doing, Mencius sets up righteousness as one of the cardinal principles in his political philosophy. He rebuts the Mohists who supposedly prioritize benefits over virtues in their moral-political thinking. For Mencius, a benefits-based governing philosophy would lead to people doing what benefits themselves and their own families the most over others, inadvertently compromising the interest of the ruler and threatening the ruler’s survival.

Righteousness is actually a key moral principle in Mohist political thought as well. The Mohists do not see any problem in maintaining both righteousness and material benefits in politics whereas Mencius seems to regard the two as polar opposite here (even though Mencius is not against profit per se as we will see shortly). However, we should note a rather curious point that Mencius would consider material benefits so antithetical to righteousness (yi), especially considering the fact that he regards desires for sex, wealth, and music as commensurable with benevolent (ren) governance (Mengzi 1B1-5). I would make the case that the peculiar nature of righteousness in the Mencius reveals, in addition to being an ideological swipe at the Mohists, an important tension within the Mencian moral-political philosophy. This has to do with the relationship between benevolence (ren) and righteousness (yi).

The relationship between ren and yi in Mencius’ thought is rather intriguing. Tellingly, in 1A1 Mencius is not invoking ren to repudiate the concern for benefits in politics. Rather it is yi that is invoked as the opposite of benefits. This is rather surprising, given the centrality of ren in his ideal of benevolent governance (renzheng). Since Mencius clearly does not reject benefits per se, as evidenced in his discussion of the politics of ren, he seems to be drawing a distinction between ren and yi.¹² Indeed, as I will argue here, this is the yi-based radical Mencius that is often in tension with the ren-based extensionist Mencius. This radical Mencius demands sacrifice in service to moral ideals, in contrast with the extensionist Mencius who maintains that all desirable goods and values can be accommodated through extension and sharing. Let us call this more radical strand of Mencius’ thought the sacrificialist Mencius, in contrast with the extensionist Mencius.

3.2. Yi and the Imperative of Sacrifice in Mencius’ Thought

The sacrificialist Mencius is captured in the following passage wherein he articulates the ideal of choosing moral commitments over one’s life in 7A42: “孟子曰, ‘天下有道, 以道殉身; 天下無道, 以身殉道. 未聞以道殉乎人者也.’” Translations of this passage vary rather widely.¹³ Such differences in the translations echo the divisions within the traditional commentaries. The key division is how to translate the word xun 殉. The original meaning of xun is the practice of burying living humans to accompany the dead in the tomb.¹⁴ It comes to mean sacrifice more broadly. However, many translators have followed Eastern Han commentator Zhao Qi’s 赵岐 (which is the basis of Qing 淸 commentator Jiao Xun’s 焦循 Mengzi Zhengyi 孟子正義) glossing xun 殉 as “to follow” (cong 從).¹⁵ Mengzi Zhengyi also cites an interpretation in the Annotations of Chu Ci (Shi Wen 釋文) that glosses xun as to sacrifice oneself in order to follow something (殺身從之曰殉) (Jiao 1987, 946). Zhu Xi (1983, 362) glosses xun as being buried with the dead, referring to objects that accompany the dead (殉, 如殉葬之殉, 以死隨物之名也). Zhu Xi extends such a gloss to mean that one should follow the Way unto death and not depart from it when the Way is corrupted in the world (道屈則身在必退, 以死相從而不離也). Part of the challenge here has to do with the three occurrences of xun in the passage with somewhat different semantic range such that if we are to insist on using the same word, either “to follow” or “to sacrifice,” to translate the word, various parts of the sentence becomes incomprehensible. Therefore, I will translate xun as “to follow” or “to accompany” in the first instance and “to follow to the grave” or simply “to sacrifice” in the latter two cases:

Mencius said, “When the Way prevails in the world, the Way accompanies the gentleman (in all of his conducts). When the Way does not prevail in the world, the gentleman follows the Way to the grave (or sacrifices himself for the Way). But I have never heard of the Way following other people to the grave (or sacrificing the Way for other people).” (Mencius 7A42, author’s translation)

The ideal Mencian gentleman portrayed here is someone who is morally uncompromising and willing to sacrifice his life in order to follow the Way. This echoes a similar sentiment in the Analects:

No scholar-officials with noble vocations or persons of ren would harm ren when trying to preserve their lives, but they could very well sacrifice themselves in accomplishing the ideal of ren. (Analects 15.9, author’s translation)

This is the sacrificialist Mencius speaking. Whereas Confucius connects sacrifice with ren (humaneness), Mencius associates sacrifice with yi (righteousness), which points to the evolution of the meanings of ren and yi between Confucius and Mencius. Indeed, the distinction between the two can even be framed in terms of the tension between the two cardinal virtues of ren (benevolence) and yi (righteousness) in the Mencian moral universe. Ren emphasizes the continuity between various domains such that moral sentiments cultivated from one domain can be extended to another, from the close-by to the far-away, which is the basic premise of benevolent politics, whereas yi highlights discontinuity between domains which is clearly at play in Mencius’ juxtaposition of righteousness against profit/benefit or even life.

So, what is yi? Van Norden cites Zhong Yong’s 中庸 parsing of yi 義 as appropriateness (yi 宜) (2002, 48) as its baseline meaning (or “thin definition” in Van Norden’s words). Like ren, yi, commonly translated as righteousness, has two dimensions in the Mencius: familial and political. In the familial domain, it is considered the equivalent of ti, deference to elder brother (義之實, 從兄是也, 4A27) or one’s elders (敬長, 義也, 7A15); in the political arena, it refers to the virtue of a minister to be fiercely loyal to his lord (未有義而後其君者也, 1A1).¹⁶ A. C. Graham synthesizes these references of yi into a more general explanation when he defines the term as “the conduct fitting to one’s role or status, for example as father or son, ruler or minister” (Graham 1989, 11).

In the famous four-sprouts passage (2A6), Mencius regards the heartmind of shame as the sprout of yi (羞惡之心, 義之端也). We can see an elaboration of the sprout of righteousness in the Mencius 6A10:

A basket of food and a bowl of soup—if one gets them, then one will live; if one doesn’t get them, then one will die. But if they’re given with contempt, then even a homeless person will not accept them. If they’re trampled upon, then even a beggar won’t take them. However, when it comes to a salary of ten thousand bushels of grain, then one doesn’t notice propriety and righteousness and accepts them. (Mengzi 6A10)

According to Van Norden,

Mencius makes the psychological claim that no human would allow himself or herself to be disgraced, even if that were necessary for survival. If this is true, then it follows that all humans have the sprout of righteousness, since the disposition that drives us to avoid disgrace, even at the cost of our lives, is precisely this sprout. . . . For the purposes of demonstrating that there is a sprout of righteousness, Mencius only needs one claim to be true: for every human there are some things that he or she avoids doing because he or she believes they are shameful. (Van Norden 2002, 49)

Indeed, this is exactly what Mencius appears to be doing in 7B31 wherein yi is characterized as nontransgression, the violation of which brings about shame to oneself:

People all have things that they will not do. To extend this reaction to that which they will do is righteousness (yi). . . . If people can fill out the heart that will not trespass, their righteousness (yi) will be inexhaustible.” (Mengzi 7B31)

The relationship between ren and yi in the text is characterized as such that ren is a moral agent’s abode whereas yi is the path toward such a state. For example, in 7A33, Mencius elaborates on the virtues of an ideal moral agent:

Where does he dwell? Benevolence. Where is his path? Righteousness. If he dwells in benevolence and follows righteousness, the task of a great person is complete. (Mengzi 7A33)¹⁷

In Kwong-loi Shun’s interpretation, Mencius means that “while ren has to do with one’s affective concern for others, yi has to do with the propriety of one’s conduct” (Shun 2015, 185). Shun glosses yi as self-commitment:

yi involves an element of reflectivity in that it presupposes one’s having a conception of certain ethical standards to which one’s way of life should conform. Furthermore, one is motivated by that conception, and is firmly committed not to allow oneself to fall below such standards. (Shun 2015, 185)

Shun’s observation here echoes Peter Boodberg’s comment about the virtue of yi, comparing it to the Latin proprius, “covering the connotations ‘not common with others’ (that is, our own), ‘personal,’ ‘characteristic,’ ‘appropriate,’ ‘constant’” (Boodberg 1953, 331). Indeed, yi as a virtue with sacrificial import carries a strong sense of personal integrity and an uncompromisingly clear boundary about what is right that can come into conflict with other virtues.¹⁸

What is unique about the sacrificialist Mencius is that this Mencius is acutely aware of the incommensurability between different desirable goods, i.e., fish and bear paws, life and righteousness, and between different domains, i.e., the familial versus the political. In fact, a significant portion of Mencius’ moral philosophy is built on such incommensurability. This Mencius highlights two kinds of conflicts: the conflict among desirable goods (e.g., life vs. righteousness) and that between the familial and the political (e.g., xiao vs. ren). When confronted with such a dilemma, this radical Mencius does not try to reconcile the intractable conflict between desirable goods and domains. Rather, he chooses righteousness over life, familial attachment over political obligation. In this connection, two kinds of sacrifices are highlighted in the text: one is to sacrifice one’s life in order to uphold what is right (shesheng quyi 舍生取義 or yishen xundao 以身殉道) as we have discussed above, and the other is to give up one’s personal ambition (“to give up the world” qitianxia 棄天下) to save family, prominently featured in the hypothetical case of Shun, when there is a conflict between the familial and the political obligations.

5.1. Dis-analogy between the Familial and the Political

If the Mencian project is indeed grounded in his articulation of hu man nature, as has been the scholarly consensus, it is worth pointing out that human nature encompasses the familial and the political dimensions but that the relationship between the two aspects are rather complicated in Mencius’ thought. Mencius is not willing to give up either dimension, which would be tantamount to losing our humanity, conflicted as it is. This means that Mencius regards both the familial and the political as ends in themselves, following their own norms and dynamics, instead of treating the former only as a training ground for the latter. For Mencius, the relationship between the familial virtues and the political virtues is not a matter of simply extending the former to accomplish the latter. That is, in Mencius’ mind, the familial is at least as much, quite often more, of an end in one’s moral cultivation than the political. Consequently, one’s filial sentiment can never be fully extended to other people’s kin and we would, and should, never treat other people’s children the same way we treat our own.

If the Mencian project is indeed grounded in his articulation of hu man nature, as has been the scholarly consensus, it is worth pointing out that human nature encompasses the familial and the political dimensions but that the relationship between the two aspects are rather complicated in Mencius’ thought. Mencius is not willing to give up either dimension, which would be tantamount to losing our humanity, conflicted as it is. This means that Mencius regards both the familial and the political as ends in themselves, following their own norms and dynamics, instead of treating the former only as a training ground for the latter. For Mencius, the relationship between the familial virtues and the political virtues is not a matter of simply extending the former to accomplish the latter. That is, in Mencius’ mind, the familial is at least as much, quite often more, of an end in one’s moral cultivation than the political. Consequently, one’s filial sentiment can never be fully extended to other people’s kin and we would, and should, never treat other people’s children the same way we treat our own.

The special status of the father, distinct from the monarch, is clearly demonstrated in the different ways Mencius addresses the abuse by the father versus that by the ruler. Mencius would never tolerate the killing of one’s father, however abusive the father might be toward his own children, evident in the narrative about Shun. This is in sharp contrast with his discussion about the killing of a tyrannical ruler (1B8). That is, Mencius allows the killing of a tyrannical king by dismissing the king as unworthy of the title king, but he would never entertain a similar justification in the killing of one’s father. This means that there is fundamental dis-analogy between the familial and the political domains, unlike Confucius for whom a father is not a father if he does not provide for his children and educate them. Shun’s story demonstrates that for Mencius a father is always a father no matter how abusive he is. Apparently, rectification of names only applies to the political domain, not to the familial domain, in Mencian thought, unlike in the Analects. For Mencius, filial piety is absolute whereas the political obligation to one’s ruler is conditional such that the killing of a tyrant can be justified in a way the killing of a father can never be. The Shun narrative is key to the Mencian absolutist position on filial piety.

Significantly, Mencius elevates familial virtues as the potential rival of political virtues with the former playing a potentially disruptive role in the demonstration of the latter within the Mencian project. For Mencius, the familial domain is where the seed of humanity is nurtured and expressed, but its political relevance and impact are rather ambivalent and should be carefully managed. Therefore, Mencius insists that one’s familial attachment is never and should never be outgrown as it defines us as humans and preserves our very humanity while, on the other hand, one’s familial relationship is not necessarily indicative of the state of affairs of a polity under one’s rule. Both aspects are clearly demonstrated in the case of Shun. That is, according to Mencius, familial attachment is one of the core expressions that define us as humans; on the other hand, the universalist sentiments that transcend familial boundary, like the heartmind that cannot bear the suffering of others, etc., also define us as humans. Although these two kinds of sentiment often align with each other, they can also come into conflict as the Shun narrative powerfully demonstrates.

5.2. Conflict among Virtues

Therefore, contrary to our established understanding of Mencius, the picture of what is a virtuous human being portrayed by Mencius is actually a conflicted one. In his attempt to solve, or at least alleviate, the tension involved, Mencius seeks to reserve a space for the familial realm in the political discourse, sometimes at the expense of the political. This is the price Mencius is willing to pay for maintaining our humanity, conflicted as it is. This means that, for Mencius, at the core of our humanity there is an irreconcilable conflict between familial attachments and universal justice. Familial attachment, however problematic under certain circumstances, should never been abandoned or transcended, or we would lose an essential part of being human.

Being human for Mencius is irreducibly familial and political at the same time. Familial sentiments can never be explained away or substituted in understanding what constitutes the human. The virtue that is required when the political and the familial virtues are in conflict is personal sacrifice. The imperative of personal sacrifice points to the fissure between the familial and the political domains, in sharp contrast with the smooth transition between them painted in the XQZP ideal.

Mencius reserves a special place for the familial domain in his political project by making familial sentiments categorically different from political virtues. That is, family is not just the medium between the personal and the political in Mencius’ thought, but rather an end in itself. This means that for Mencius the familial is self-justifying and self-justified, and that its value in defining us as humans does not lie in its relevance to the political. This also suggests that if we allow the political to overwhelm the familial, we run the risk of losing our humanity, as Mencius’ accusation of the Mohist ideal of impartial care as unfilial points to. Indeed, Mencius’ criticism of Mohists being unfilial can be more fruitfully interpreted as Mencius’ rejection of the latter’s judgement call, not their arguments with which Mencius actually agrees. What lies at the heart of the Mencian judgement, distinct from the Mohist and Yangist ones, is that Mencius has a keen sense of the limit of universalist arguments, a conflict he is not keen to resolve.

In this respect, Mencius might even be understood as joining the Mohists and the Yangists in questioning the relevance of the familial, to the political discourse, even though the familial is featured much more prominently in Mencius’ thought than in the other two. The Mohist, Yangist, and Mencian debate can be summarized in terms of their respective defenses of the realms of the personal, the familial, and the political, with the Mohists exclusively for the political, the Yangists exclusively for the personal, and the Mencians trying to accommodate all three. However, for Mencius the familial and the political are categorically different and neither can subsume the other under it. The insight of Mencian thought is precisely his willingness to dwell in that ambiguity of universalism and partiality, neither of which he is willing to give up in his moral deliberations on what is human. In his political project, Mencius is determined to accommodate both sets of sentiments, regarding them as equally valuable if ultimately incommensurable.

This keen sense of a deep conflict at the root of what it means to be human is in sharp contrast with the Mohists and the Yangists whose positions might be more conceptually coherent but both fail to accommodate the complexity of the human condition, at least from a Mencian perspective. Seen this way, the tension in Mencius’ thought in this particular aspect is actually a feature, rather than a flaw, in the Mencian moral-political project.