Category Archives: Mencius

Episode 28 of “This Is the Way”: Mencius Against Mohist Impartialism

In this episode, we continue our exploration of Mohist impartial caring (jian’ai 兼愛) by examining two of Mencius’s most influential objections: (1) the “Without a Father” Argument (Mencius 3B9) and (2) the “Two Roots” Argument (Mencius 3A5).

Along the way, we take up some important questions: Should moral values be impartial even between family members and total strangers? Is radical impartiality incompatible with being human? And should ethics be grounded in (rational) doctrine or in human nature? Continue reading →

Friday, September 19: “Engineering the Dao: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Mengzi” Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy

The COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY and the WEATHERHEAD EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE

welcome you to an IN-PERSON meeting:

Hagop Sarkissian (CUNY): «Engineering the Dao: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Mengzi»

With responses from Tao Jiang (Rutgers)

ABSTRACT: Why does Mengzi tell rulers that their love of wealth and women poses no obstacle to ideal rulership, even as he venerates sage kings who seemingly lack such desires? How can he advocate for universal moral response in the child-in-the-well scenario while explicitly rejecting impartial concern? Why does he advise King Xuan to avoid looking at sacrificial oxen—effectively telling him to ignore his compassionate impulses—if moral sprouts are meant to guide ethical action? And why does he reject merit-based appointments, favoring hereditary offices, while advocating ethical transformation of government? These persistent interpretive puzzles have led some scholars to conclude that Mengzi’s philosophy is fundamentally conflicted. In this talk, I propose that these puzzles dissolve when we shift our focus from theoretical systematization to dao construction. Rather than seeing Mengzi primarily as a theorist of human nature, a virtue ethicist, or a political philosopher, I argue he is best understood as a constructor of dao: an engineer of workable frameworks for guiding conduct and organizing social life. Like an engineer, Mengzi builds with available resources—human psychology, institutions, cultural forms—within real-world constraints, prioritizing sustainability over theoretical purity. This “pragmatic constructivist” reading explains Mengzi’s characteristic patterns: motivational permissiveness (redirecting self-interested desires rather than suppressing them), institutional conservatism (preserving Zhou structures while fostering ethical renewal), and accommodation of natural family attachments (without making them the normative foundation). Instead of demanding universal emotional expansion, Mengzi engineers coordination mechanisms that work with human nature, social realities, and political structures as they actually exist. I aim to show how this engineering approach resolves longstanding interpretive difficulties and reveals Mengzi as a systematic social engineer whose methodology remains relevant for contemporary debates on moral and political progress.

DATE: September 19th
TIME: 5:30-7:30pm EST
LOCATION: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University, 1150 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR NON-COLUMBIA GUESTS: All non-affiliated members of our community must RSVP to Helen Han Wei Luo (hl3631@columbia.edu) preferably no later than Tuesday, September 16th, including in the request your name on government-issued ID in order to be granted access to campus. Non-affiliated members who do not RSVP will not be given entry to campus. Please also plan to arrive early.

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New Article: Brys, “Action-based Benevolence”

The European Journal of Philosophy has just published Waldemar Brys’s essay “Action-Based Benevolence”; see here. This provocative paper is the first essay specifically on Chinese philosophy in the EJP, which now joins the list of “mainstream” journals that have published works of Chinese or comparative philosophy.

If you publish in a journal outside of the specialist journals that we try to routinely track here at Warp, Weft, and Way, by all means let us know and we’ll share the news.

Read on for the Abstract.

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Episode 13 of “This Is the Way”: Family Before State

Confucianism is well known for prioritizing familial responsibilities and love over other competing demands such as public interest or duties to the state. In this episode we explore two of the best known passages from early Confucianism that some modern scholars believe makes Confucianism morally problematic. The first passage we discuss is the “Upright Gong” passage, Analects 13.18, which has Confucius advocating mutual “covering up” of crimes by fathers and sons. The second passage is Mengzi 7A35, in which Mengzi is asked what the sage king Shun would have done if his father had committed murder. Mengzi’s answer, briefly stated, is that Shun would have given up his throne and would have fled with his father to care for him for the rest of his life.

Through these passages we explore questions about justice, consequentialist ethics, and the nature of moral dilemmas (and Confucian ways of handling them). Continue reading →

Episode 10 of “This Is the Way”: Moral Cultivation

How do we become good? What is the process by which we acquire the virtues? We examine these question by focusing on some key concepts in Mencius’s account of moral development such as reflection and extension. This discussion also centers on Mengzi 1A7 and the famous “king and the ox” passage that has been the subject of much conversation and debate. Continue reading →

Episode 9 of “This Is the Way”: Moral Sprouts

What is the nature and source of morality? Are human beings naturally inclined toward moral goodness? The early Confucian thinker Mencius (Mengzi) believed that human beings by nature possessed certain moral sprouts that could be nurtured and developed into robust virtues. In this episode we explore Mencius’s account of these moral sprouts, examining both philosophical and psychological justifications for their existence. Continue reading →

Episode 2 of “This Is the Way”: Confucians on Shame

The second episode of This Is the Way is on shame as a moral emotion, as understood by classical Confucian philosophers (especially Confucius and Mencius, but also Xunzi). Our special guest is Jing Iris Hu (HU Jing 胡婧), author of “Shame, Vulnerability, and Change.” Key questions include the following: What are the Confucian arguments for having a sense of shame? To what extent can shame be autonomous or independent of social attitudes, and what mechanisms do the Confucian recommend for making it so independent? Do fully virtuous people need a sense of shame?
Below you will find a more detailed accounting of topics, some specific passages and books or articles mentioned in the episode, and an opportunity to “weigh in” and share your views about the topic (or about the hosts’ wild claims about the text). Continue reading →

Book Of Interest: Perkins, Doing What you Really Want

Oxford University Press has published Doing What You Really Want: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mengzi by Franklin Perkins. In this book, “Franklin Perkins presents a coherent, systematic, and accessible explanation of Mengzi’s philosophy. He covers everything from the place of human beings in nature to human psychology and philosophy of emotions to the various way in which we can deliberately change and cultivate ourselves.” To find this book in both paper and online versions click here.

Connolly Reviews Kim, Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics

NDPR Sungmoon Kim Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi (Reviewed by Tim Connolly, East Stroudsburg University)

“Confucian political theory offers a normative vision for contemporary societies that draws on concepts from thinkers in the Chinese philosophical tradition initiated by Confucius (551-479 BCE). Much of the recent work in this area is motivated by dialogue with mainstream Western political theory, focusing on questions of Confucianism’s compatibility with liberal democracy. Yet as Sungmoon Kim writes in the opening pages of the book, these attempts to establish dialogue have tended to look at general characteristics of the classical Confucian tradition, giving less attention to internal debates and disagreements within this tradition. Kim’s book is devoted to a reconstruction of…”

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