To Become the King of All under Heaven: Mengzi as a Strategist of Regime Subversion

Lee, Ting‐mien

doi:10.5040/9781350115873.ch-008

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“…The popular interpretation reads these paragraphs as Mengzi lecturing the kings against "unethical" hegemony or benefit-oriented rule and hoping to promote benevolent governance instead. As I have argued elsewhere (Lee 2017(Lee , 2021), Mengzi's advice of the kingly way was that King Xuan should have learned to become a true king (wang 王), namely, Son of Heaven, rather than learning about the strategy of a regional superpower. As Mengzi rightly suggested, the era of hegemony was over.…”

Section: The Strategy Of Ending War With War: Mengzi's Solution To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As to the implementation of benevolence governance, its aim was to improve people's living condition to make them willing to combat enemy soldiers. (Mengzi, 1A5) 5 I have argued and defended this interpretation of Mengzi in Lee (2017Lee ( , 2021Lee ( , 2022; thus, I will not repeat my arguments in length in the current article. My interpretation is intended to reconstruct what I believe the historical authors of Mengzi and Mozi would have thought.…”

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confidence: 97%

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Interstate Relational Ethics: Mengzi and Later Mohists in Dialogue

Lee

2023

Religions

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The popular interpretation holds that Mengzi was strongly critical of Mozi because the Mohist moral theory was antithetical to Confucian relational ethics. According to this interpretation, Mohism promotes the norm of “impartiality” or “impartial care”, which violates the Confucian norms of “filial piety” and “graded love”. Accordingly, Mengzi thought that the Confucian ideal would not be realized if Mohism continued to prevail. Scholars have tried to nuance and revise this dominant interpretation. For example, some have pointed out the importance of family-oriented values in Mohist ethical theory, arguing that Mengzi likely misunderstood or purposefully mispresented Mohism. This article is an initial attempt to modify the popular interpretation by arguing that the debate between Mengzi and Mohist regarding relational ethics is predominantly about the relations between states rather than individuals. This interpretation sheds light on a core difference between Confucian and Mohist ethical theories and can help make better sense of some later Mohist passages.

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Section: The Strategy Of Ending War With War: Mengzi's Solution To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 97%