Mencius
Chinese Confucian philosopher (372-289 BC) · Academics · Lived 372 BC to 289 BC · aged 83
Mencius is read about 714 times a day, in 76 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 27 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?The philosopher who argued that people are born good - and that rulers who forget this will lose everything. His debates with kings during China's bloodiest centuries became one of Confucianism's core texts, and his optimism about human nature still divides scholars from the pessimists who followed.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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Half Portraits of the Great Sage and Virtuous Men of Old - Meng Ke (孟軻).jpg?width=1200)
Chunqiu Lou 36 Mengzi.jpg?width=1200)
Confucio (Master Kong Qiu)
Educating a Son, by Wu Shien
Great Confucian Figures - Painting of Mengzi by Kanō Sansetsu.png?width=1200)
Kurihara Gyokuyo - Mother’s Love (Mencius’ Mother Cutting the Loom)
Kōno Bairei - The Teaching of Mencius’ Mother Cutting the Threads of a LoomIn their own words 10
, If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
Mencius went to see King Huei of Liang.
He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain.
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Born Meng Ke around 371 BC, he joined Confucius's lineage four generations down and inherited a tradition in need of sharper edges. The Warring States period gave him his laboratory: he travelled from court to court, trying to convince rulers that humane governance wasn't idealism but survival, that citizens under good policy would naturally care for families, learn rites, and strengthen the state. Those conversations became the Mencius, later canonised as a Confucian classic. His insistence that human nature is righteous set him against Xunzi, who called it evil, a split that never healed. He died around 289 BC, having earned the title Second Sage - high praise in a tradition that rarely gave it.
Academics born in the 380s BC 4
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