Who was Mencius?
Mencius claimed to be interpreting Confucius, who died more than a hundred years earlier. Mencius lived during China’s “Warring States” period when seven powerful states competed for power. He refused to support any one state and instead advocated social justice and peace for all of humanity. Mencius’ ideas in a nutshell: Here are some key themes of Mencius’ thought. 1) We all share a common humanity and a “heart of compassion:” Mencius believed our common humanity was more important than religious or national differences. The core of this was our sense of compassion towards others, which he viewed as being innate and the source of both human solidarity and ethics. In a famous passage he argued: “My reason for saying no man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others is this. Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be moved to compassion, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the parent
