42 pages • 1 hour read
MenciusMencius
Nonfiction | Book | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Book III, Part A Summary
Opening with a discussion of funeral rites in connection with respect for one’s parents (section 2), Book III goes onto to reiterate the king’s material obligation to his people. This obligation is both moral and prudential. If the people lack “constant means,” or economic security, then it is not only that they will rebel: The king will have no moral grounds to punish them for doing so. This discussion sets up the central section and argument of this book (section 4). A man, Hsu Hsing, maintains that “a good and wise ruler shares the work of tilling of the land with his people. He rules while cooking his own meals” (58). He also argues that the king should share the wealth of his granaries and treasuries with the common folk.
Thus, Hsing can be understood as a kind of proto-democrat, or socialist. If the king must take a hand in the work of the people, it follows that the people must take a hand in the work of the king. If this is true, there is no need to have a division between king and people to begin with. While not explicitly stated, the logical consequence, and intent, of Hsing’s position is clear: There need not be a separate class of rulers; the people can rule themselves.
Mencius sees this view as dangerous and wrong-headed. He uses an analogy with the economic division of labor to argue this. Different people have different talents and sets of skills. Thus, it makes sense for them to specialize in a specific area, then trade. The skilled potter can make more pots than he needs and trade them with the specialist tailor for his surplus of clothes. He can trade another part of his surplus of pots with the specialist farmer for the latter’s surplus of grain. This way he and everyone else will be better off than if they tried to make everything they needed by themselves. By analogy, it makes sense to have one who is skilled in governing concentrating on governance rather than spending their time farming or making pots. The talents and application of those talents are then maximized. Thus, a state is better off with a specialized leader: a king. The alternative would be systematically poor and chaotic government. This would benefit no one and would risk throwing society back to the social level of the barbarians.
Book III, Part B Summary
Part B starts with a comment about the rites of marriage and the proper relation between man and woman. As Mencius says, “It is the way of a wife or concubine to consider obedience and docility the norm” (65). As such, women should respectfully obey and follow their husbands, just as the son obeys the father, and the subject the prince.
Like Part A, though, this half of Book III revolves around a key philosophical debate. In section 9, a man called Kung-tu Tzu asks Mencius why he has a reputation for “disputation.” Given that the teaching of Mencius is all about restoring harmony, this is quite a criticism. Mencius is being accused of seeking out and provoking conflict, precisely the opposite of what he preaches. Mencius argues that he has no alternative. In times such as the present, when disorder reigns, it may be necessary to fight and contest the forces of chaos and the enemies of the way. Doing so may be the only means to restoring peace. Specifically, for the sage, this entails combatting “heresies” that have arisen as perversions of the original teachings of Confucius. Such heresies both are reflections of the existing social disorder and serve to perpetuate it by blocking the path of morality.
The two heresies Mencius has in mind in this section are those taught by Yang Chu and Mo Ti, respectively. They represent the two extremes of possible relations to oneself and others. Yang advocates egotism and individualism: Everyone should look after themselves and put their own interests first. Mo proposes “love without discrimination” (73). This means we love and care for all equally, regardless of their relationship to us. In both cases Mencius sees a threat to social cohesion and the state. Pure egotism would mean society breaking down into a mass of warring individuals. Meanwhile, equal love for all undermines the special bonds that form the bedrock of any harmonious society. For example, in Mencius’s view, one can only respect his father properly if there is a particularity to his love for him. If he were to treat another’s father, or a stranger, the same way, a special relation with his father would not be possible.
Book III Analysis
The defense of autocracy in Book III is likely to grate on modern ears. That it exists in a section where education’s goal is said to be to teach the “distinction between husband and wife” and “precedence of the old over the young” (60), and in a book where women are instructed in subservience to men, hardly helps. From this argument, however, several important things are revealed about Mencius and his philosophy of “the way.” To see what these are, it is necessary to look back to Book II and the discussion of the sage there. In Part A, section 2 of that book, the reader is told that Confucius, as an exemplary sage, was a master of rhetoric as well as of virtuous conduct, but it does not address what exact this description entails, or why it matters.
Part of the answer lies in the fact that it is the job of the sage not just to express that which is true but to transform it. His role is to try and affect the actual behavior and policy of rulers and to effect a transformation in reality, not merely to passively reflect on it. Similarly, the role of Mencius as a text is to inspire readers to benevolence and to becoming part of the way themselves. As such, skill in “rhetoric”—the use of words to persuade and illicit emotions and reaction—becomes essential to the job of the sage. That is why the argument for autocracy becomes significant.
Book II gives the reader relatively few details about what it means to use skilled rhetoric. In contrast, in Book III, with this specific discussion, there is one of the clearest examples of a core rhetorical strategy of Mencius’s: argument by analogy. By utilizing contrasts with commonly understood and familiar phenomena, Mencius both elucidates a complex or abstract point and convinces others of its validity. We can see this, for example, when he talks in Book III about having to make for ourselves the “earthenware steamer for cooking rice and iron implements for ploughing the fields” (58). The comparison between everyone ruling and the idea of making these familiar objects oneself allows Mencius to shed light on a complex philosophical and social issue. It may also help him to forestall an attitude—questioning of the right of rulers to rule—that is harmful to the way.
However, questions remain regarding the substance of this type of argument. Even if analogy allows for a more harmonious, and seductive, style than standard philosophical writing, it tells us little about the truth or validity of its conclusions, and such rhetoric risks degenerating into sophistry or manipulation. In general terms one might say that whether it does very much depends on the strength of the analogy in question. In the case of the argument in Book III, there are points where this might be queried. Critically, the analogy, and argument, only seems to work for direct democracy. That is, it might work if one is talking about everyone directly being part of government while also trying to do other jobs, but it does not preclude representative democracy, where people can elect policy makers to act on their behalf. In short, to say that some specialization in roles, and in governance, might be beneficial does not mean that it is good or necessary in all cases, or to all extents.
To use another analogy, while it may be unwise to try growing all one’s own food, this fact does not rule out the wisdom or utility of having an herb garden. Indeed, Marx’s criticism of the division of labor, especially in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), is based on just such a point. Overspecialized work, he argues, has alienated human beings from the essential creativity, and multi-faceted character, of their nature. Nonetheless, these points do not necessarily show us that the use of analogy is a bad idea, nor do they demonstrate that Mencius cannot successfully combine rhetoric and philosophical substance.
The content of Mencius’s argument here also needs context. What seemed like the very real existential threat to the state, and the overwhelmingly agricultural character of his society, meant that authoritarian rule of some kind must have appeared unavoidable for him. The economic conditions, and the nature of peasant life, simply did not allow for a radically different form of government. Instead, the best idea was to focus on bringing existing rulers back to the way of proper governance. Hence, the role of the sage as adviser to and critic of power becomes an essential one.
