View Shopping Cart Your Famous Chinese Account Shopping Help Famous Chinese Homepage China Chinese Chinese Culture Chinese Restaurant & Chinese Food Travel to China Chinese Economy & Chinese Trade Chinese Medicine & Chinese Herb Chinese Art
logo
Search
March 8, 2014
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Mencius

Wikipedia

 
colspan=2 align=center style="border-top:2px solid"|Image: Mencius1.jpg|center|250px|Mencius
style="background:#ccf; border-bottom:2px solid" align=center colspan=2|Mencius
align=right style="border-top:1px solid"|Chinese name|Ancestral name (姓): style="border-top:1px solid"|Ji (Chinese language|Chinese: ; Pinyin: Jī)
align=right style="border-top:1px solid"|Chinese name|Clan name (氏): style="border-top:1px solid"|Meng¹ (Ch: ; Py: M?ng)
align=right style="border-top:1px solid"|Chinese given name|Given name (名): style="border-top:1px solid"|Ke (Ch: ; Py: Kē)
align=right style="border-top:3px solid"|Chinese courtesy name|Courtesy name (字): style="border-top:3px solid"|Unknown²
align=right style="border-top:1px solid"|Posthumous name (謚): style="border-top:1px solid"|Master Meng the Second
Sage
³
(Ch: 亞聖孟子 ;
Py: Y?sh?ng M?ngzǐ)
align=right style="border-top:1px solid"|Styled: style="border-top:1px solid"|Master Meng 4
(Ch: 孟子; Py: M?ngzǐ)
colspan=2 align=left style="border-top:3px solid"|1 The original clan name was Mengsun (孟孫), but was
shortened into Meng (
), before or after Mencius's life,
it is not possible to say.
colspan=2 align=left |2 Traditionally, his courtesy name was assumed to be Ziche
(
子車), sometimes incorrectly written as Ziyu (子輿) or Ziju
(
子居), but recent scholarly works show that these courtesy
names appeared in the 3rd century AD and apply to another
historical figure named Meng Ke who also lived in Chinese
antiquity and was mistaken for Mencius.
colspan=2 align=left |3 I.e. the 2nd sage after Confucius. Posthumous name given in
1530 by Jiajing|Emperor Jiajing. In the two centuries preceding 1530,
the posthumous name was "The Second Sage Duke of Zou"
(
鄒國亞聖公) which is still the name that can be seen carved
in the Mencius ancestral temple in Zoucheng.
colspan=2 align=left |4Romanization|Romanized as Mencius.

Mencius (most accepted dates: 372 BC – 289 BC; other possible dates: 385 BC – 303 BC or 302 BC) was born in the State of Zou (鄒國), now forming the territory of the county-level city of Zoucheng (邹城市), Shandong province, only 30 km (18 miles) south of Qufu, the town of Confucius. He was an itinerant China|Chinese philosopher and sage, and one of the principal interpreters of Confucianism. Like Confucius, according to legend, he travelled China for forty years to offer advice to rulers for reform. He served as an official during the Warring States Period (403 – 221 BC) in the State of Qi (齊 q?) from 319 BC to 312 BC. He expressed his filial devotion when he took an absence of three years from his official duties for Qi to mourn his mother's death. Disappointed at his failure to effect changes in his contemporary world, he retired from public life.

A follower of Confucianism, Mencius argued for the infinite goodness of the individual, believing that it was society's influence—its lack of a positive cultivating influence—which caused bad character. He even argued that it was acceptable for people to overthrow or even kill a ruler who ignored the people's needs and ruled harshly. Mencius argued that human beings are born with an innate moral sense which society has corrupted, and that the goal of moral cultivation is to return to one's innate morality.

Mencius' interpretation of Confucianism has generally been considered the orthodox version by subsequent Chinese philosophers, especially the Neo-Confucians of the Song dynasty. Mencius (also spelled Mengzi or Meng-tzu), a book of his conversations with kings of the time, is one of the Four books which form the core of orthodox Confucian thinking. In contrast to the sayings of Confucius which are short and self-contained, Mencius consists of long dialogues with extensive prose.

Mencius spoke frequently and highly of the well-field system.




  • Chinese philosophy





  • http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/contao/mencius.html English translation of the <i>Mencius</i> by Charles Muller

  • http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius English Translation of the <i>Mencius</i> with comments by James Legge

Image:Mencius - Project Gutenberg eText 15250.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Mencius, from Myths and Legends of China, 1922 by E. T. C. Werner

Category:Chinese thinkers
Category:Confucian texts
Category:Korean confucianism
Category:Chinese philosophers

de:Mengzi
eo:Mencius
fr:Mencius
hr:Mencije
ms:Mencius
ja:孟子
pl:Mencjusz
zh:孟子

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mencius".


Last Modified:   2005-04-13


Search
All informatin on the site is © FamousChinese.com 2002-2005. Last revised: January 2, 2004
Are you interested in our site or/and want to use our information? please read how to contact us and our copyrights.
To post your business in our web site? please click here. To send any comments to us, please use the Feedback.
To let us provide you with high quality information, you can help us by making a more or less donation: