M
Figure of Confucianism
Mencius — nature is good.
Anyone seeing a child fall toward a well moves without calculating: from that flinch of the heart, Mencius argued the whole tradition.
Names & titlesMencius — Mengzi
DomainThe second sage
Depicted asThe debater of kings
StandingHis ruling — human nature is good and grows like grain — became orthodoxy
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held
Mencius supplied the argument Confucianism needed: that human nature is good. His demonstration is a thought experiment — anyone seeing a child about to fall into a well feels alarm, before any calculation of advantage — and from that flinch he derives four innate sprouts that education cultivates rather than installs. His rival Xunzi held the opposite, that nature is crooked and must be straightened by ritual, and the debate between them is East Asia's version of a question the West has run through Rousseau and Hobbes.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideas
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The Tirthankaras cannot help you.
Jainism · core tenet
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A person is built with two inclinations, and neither is a devil.
Judaism · core tenet
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There is a judgment, and something is at stake in it.
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