Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Mr. Nice Guy of the Confucians, he believes all of us are born good.
So tell me about Mencius, your second choice.
Mencius lived about one century after Confucius but it was not until the Song dynasty, some 1000 years later, that Mencius’ interpretation of Confucius became the most influential one. Mencius believed that we are born good. He had a fairly optimistic view of human nature as well as the view that the government should rely upon informal means of social control rather than harsh punishment as a way of securing social order and harmony.
He’s also known for his views on what constitutes a just war. Could you expand on that?
Mencius is often viewed as the softest of the Confucians, as an idealist who wasn’t sensitive to realpolitik. But he was writing in the Warring States era, which was an age of constant conflict, and he had some principles for warfare--for when warfare is moral or just--which I think are quite well grounded in reality. To my mind they are quite realistic and feasible, and have much in common with modern ideas about just war. He provides an account of when defensive warfare is justified, namely when one is attacked in an unprovoked way by a neighbouring country. In this situation military force is legitimate if the ruler has the support of the people. He also has this idea-- equivalent to the modern idea of humanitarian intervention--that when there is a ruler who is systematically oppressing the people, there might be a case for using military force to liberate the people. But he is quite clear that certain conditions have to be in place for this to be legitimate. One is that the people have to welcome the invading army, and that the welcome has to be long lasting, not just short-term. Also, there has to be the equivalent of international support for the invasion. He also investigates what we mean by oppression. And for him, oppression means that the ruler is violating the most basic needs; most notably that of survival. Mencius wouldn’t argue that you could legitimately invade another country in order to promote democracy. If a ruler is systematically killing the people, or systematically starving them, only then might there be a case for humanitarian intervention.
So Mencius would not agree with the Chinese Communist Party’s central foreign policy tenet - that outside interference in the internal affairs of a country should never be permitted?
The idea of sovereignty was emphasised throughout most of the 20th century in China, which made sense when China was being bullied by foreign powers and it needed to strengthen itself. Now China is a relatively powerful and stable country, with international influence. I think it will need to think a bit outside of the box, and that’s why some people are retrieving some of the ancient Confucian sources, including Mencius, which have worthwhile things to say about modern day humanitarian intervention.
Read full interview
Daniel Bell, Professor of philosophy at China’s Tsinghua University explains that Confucius himself was pretty much a political failure…His most influential interpreter was Mencius, one hundred years later. And he too was pretty much a failure in terms of political influence. It’s only in the Han dynasty, about five hundred years after Confucius’ time, that Confucianism became the official state ideology.
