Mencius maintains that the most satisfying life for a human being is the life of benevolence, rightness, wisdom and ritual propriety. He also repeatedly appeals to happiness in his efforts to persuade others to develop and exercise the virtues. Mencius is therefore a eudaimonist. He offers a carefully crafted, teleological account of human nature that appears designed in part to support his eudaimonism. In contrast with proposals by other scholars, I argue that Mencius’ distinctive conception of happiness is best expressed (...) by the construction jin xing 盡性, “fulfilling human nature” or the nearly equivalent jin xin 盡心, “fulfilling one’s heart.” The fact that human nature includes the sprouts of the four chief virtues allows Mencius to resolve common concerns about happiness as a motive for virtue. In addition to supporting his eudaimonism, Mencius’ conception of human nature also conceptually unifies his vision for human flourishing, including its emotional, material, social, moral, and cosmic dimensions. (shrink)

Classical Confucian thought is deeply concerned, on the one hand, with individual moral self-cultivation and, on the other, with the widespread establishment of a moral social order. These twin aspirations find expression in the legends of Yao, Shun, King Wen, and other sage-kings who achieved perfection in both realms. Yet a serious tension arises, because despite Confucius’s and Mencius’s moral purity and devotion, their political impact is marginal. They consistently teach that humaneness and rightness will transform the world, and work (...) energetically to put this principle into action. Yet their own experience is an uneasy fit with this principle, as moral decay remains the norm among the rulers of their.. (shrink)