Mencius Commentary

Author: Gao Zhancheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features:
Mencius took up the mission of promoting Confucius's teachings. In Mencius, Mencius consistently showed concern for realpolitik and proposed the concept of benevolent governance (renzheng) that restrained politics with morality. He firmly believed in the goodness of human nature and created the theory of the four cardinal virtues (situdian) to cultivate ethics from one's innate nature. He highly valued the dignity of intellectuals and emphasized the idea of innate knowledge (liangzhi) to transform society with knowledge. Mencius was the founder of early Confucianism and an important inheritor and developer of Confucius's teachings.
Mencius was co-authored by Mencius and his disciples, recording Mencius's educational achievements and providing a detailed account of his thoughts. It is also an important historical source for early Confucianism and is ranked among the thirteen Confucian classics, becoming a key text for annotations.
An Interpretation of Mencius attempts to explain Mencius through a running commentary and introduces the backgrounds of related figures and events in multiple ways, a task that annotators of Mencius had never undertaken.