Confucius and Mencius are representatives of Confucian school, and the essence of their thoughts is to advocate "benevolence". Confucius' thought takes "benevolence" as the core and thinks that "benevolence" is "love". Put forward the arguments of "don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you" and "stand if you want, and reach if you want", advocate the principle of "loyalty and forgiveness", and think that the implementation of "benevolent policy" should be based on "courtesy": "self-denial, courtesy is benevolence". He is skeptical about the religious superstition of ghosts and gods since the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, and thinks that "you can't be a ghost if you don't know his life" and "you can't be a gentleman if you don't know his life". It also pays attention to the combination of "learning" and "thinking", and puts forward the viewpoints of "learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is dangerous" and "reviewing the old and learning the new". Advocate the atmosphere of teaching in private schools, advocate teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, "teach without distinction", "never tire of learning, never tire of teaching", and emphasize that "a gentleman learns to love others, while a villain learns to learn easily". Politically, he put forward the idea of "correcting the name", thinking that "Jun Jun, minister, father and son" should be worthy of the name, and put forward the viewpoint of "not suffering from inequality, not suffering from poverty, but suffering from worry". Since the Western Han Dynasty, Confucius' theory has become the cultural orthodoxy of feudal society for more than two thousand years, with great influence.
Mencius inherited and developed Confucius' thought of ruling by virtue, and developed it into the theory of benevolent governance, which became the core of his political thought. He applied the principles of "pro" and "long" to politics, eased class contradictions and safeguarded the long-term interests of the feudal ruling class. Mencius closely combined ethics with politics, emphasizing that moral cultivation is the basis of doing politics well. He said: "The foundation of the world is in the country, the foundation of the country is at home, and the foundation of the home is in the body." Later, the idea of "nourishing qi and calming the world" put forward by University was developed according to this idea of Mencius.
Mencius summarized moral norms into four categories, namely, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom. At the same time, the human relations are summarized into five kinds, namely, "father and son are close, monarch and minister are righteous, husband and wife are different, old and young are orderly, and friends are trustworthy". The highest category of Mencius' philosophical thought is heaven. Mencius inherited Confucius' thought of destiny, removed the residual meaning of personality god, and imagined heaven as a spiritual entity with moral attributes. He said: "Honest people, heaven is also." Mencius defined the moral concept of honesty as the essential attribute of heaven, and believed that heaven was the origin of the inherent moral concept of human nature.