Mencius pointed out: "Therefore, everyone has an unbearable heart: at first glance, people today are full of compassion. If you don't make friends with obedient parents, you will be praised by hardworking villagers. If you don't hate their voices, you will naturally do so. From the point of view, there is no compassion, and it is inhuman; Shameless and evil, the end of benevolence is also; The heart of shame and evil, the end of righteousness; The words of the heart are the end of the ceremony; The heart of right and wrong is the end of wisdom; People have four ends. There are four bodies. " In other words, everyone has "sympathy", that is, sincere sympathy. For example, other people's children are in danger of falling into a well, so they naturally have to help regardless of their personal fame and fortune. This is the beginning of "benevolence" virtue; "Shame and evil heart", that is, the sense of shame and the psychology of hating others, is the beginning of "righteousness" virtue; "the heart of humility", that is, the psychology of respecting the elderly, is the beginning of the virtue of "courtesy"; The "heart of right and wrong" is the psychology of distinguishing right from wrong, good and evil, and it is the beginning of "wisdom" virtue; The "heart of right and wrong" is the psychology of distinguishing right from wrong, good and evil, and it is the beginning of "wisdom" virtue. Yu Zi believes that whether people have sympathy, shame, obedience and sense of right and wrong is the fundamental difference between people and animals. Four hearts are four ends, which is the source of human kindness, courtesy and wisdom.
Mencius repeatedly stressed that everyone has "four hearts" and it is easy to produce "four virtues", pointing out that "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom are not foreign, but I am also inherent, just thinking." So, if you ask, you will get it, and if you give up, you will lose it. It's still the times, and those who don't count can't do their best. "That is to say, the individual's benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and morality are not formed due to the influence of the external environment. This is inherent in the individual. If you seek from your heart, you can acquire these virtues. The reason why people are different in benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom is not because of the difference of "four hearts", but because some people "try their best" because they are good from the heart, and some people "can't try their best" because they are not good enough from the heart.
Mencius regarded "Four Hearts" as the moral psychological basis of "Four Virtues", and called this "conscience" of "knowing without worrying" and "being good without learning" as "conscience", which formed his theory of moral origin of subjective idealism. Historical materialism holds that morality comes from people's material conditions and social practice. Although Mencius' view is wrong, he explained the origin of morality with the help of people's simple moral feelings, which is convenient for people to understand and accept morality and has certain significance in moral practice.
Moral consciousness is an important part of Mencius' thought and a symbol of Confucian scholars. Morality mentioned by Confucianism refers to morality, morality and ethics, but in the pre-Qin period, it didn't all mean this. For example, Lao Tzu also talks about morality, and his anthology is called Tao Te Ching, but what he said about morality is that you can be virtuous by taking the main road, but the concepts in China's traditional culture can always be linked by several bends. Morality gained from Tao is ultimately related to the morality of human ethics. But before a comprehensive interpretation, the two are different after all.
Moral culture is a natural process of correcting social relations in social development. Why is there such a requirement? In fact, it just shows that the traditional consanguineous society has begun to disintegrate, and interpersonal relationship is no longer a blood brotherhood. In dealing with people who are not related by blood, there needs to be a rule different from that in blood. This is the most basic rule, such as the Ten Commandments of Moses: Honor your parents, don't kill, don't commit adultery, and don't. These most basic laws are naturally inherited as the foundation in moral culture. For people with different blood relations, these are not enough. There must be rules that adapt to the regional society, including laws and ethics.
Since Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, moral culture has been developing continuously. System of rites and music of the Duke of Zhou was a concentrated action. Five hundred years later, in the era of Confucius, it is possible to put forward some normative moral norms on the basis of a case, such as benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and knowing good and evil. This kind of normative morality is not to solve individual cases, but to solve a group of behaviors. Confucius focused on moral cases, thus forming many norms. From the Analects of Confucius, there are dozens of things that can become moral norms, no matter how many connotations there are, but the core is these things that were later standardized as the five permanents, four dimensions and three virtues.
The moral norms discussed by Confucius are basically external, a norm imposed by external forces on people and people's hearts, and can be said to belong to moral heteronomy. If the rules are put here, everyone will abide by them, thus forming an action-oriented tendency. Therefore, the moral system of Confucius is characterized by many rules, focusing on heteronomy and behavior. However, this external moral concept that regulates people's behavior has changed in Meng Si School. They began to pay attention to the role of the human heart. When the phenomenon of "the official of the heart thinks" is recognized, the role of the heart begins to be noticed. One of the primary functions of the human heart is to form moral concepts, thus transforming morality from heteronomy to self-discipline.
The important connotation of Mencius' moral view is "four ends". As for whether the theory of good nature is moral content, it needs to be discriminated.
Whether the theory of good nature is a moral concept means good, which embodies a manifestation of human beings and has moral content. It is of course opposite to evil to say that human nature is good, and the distinction between good and evil also has moral content. So, is it moral to say that human nature is good? Generally speaking, it has moral connotation. On the contrary, evil human nature also has moral connotation, so the view of good human nature can be regarded as a moral concept. However, we have analyzed Mencius' theory of human nature, and things are not so simple.
When we analyze the goodness of human nature, we point out that human nature has various manifestations, both good and evil. This is a very common phenomenon. Even in a person, there are good and evil. A good man just has no more evil than his kindness, and evil is just stronger than kindness. In modern terms, it is the subordinate relationship between good and evil. With absolute good and evil as the two ends, real human nature is between these two ends, showing a certain degree. When the subordinate degree of evil becomes smaller, that is, when evil becomes insignificant, he is a great man, that is, a saint; When kindness becomes insignificant, he becomes a total villain, just like the ancients. Westerners say that good and evil will not be known until the end of the trial in the future, while China people think that as long as they die, the judgment of good and evil will be carried out soon. In the words of literati, this is a final judgment, and the secular king thinks they will be tried in the temple of the prince of Yan soon. In many stories, it is often said that there will be one or two good deeds in the files of heinous villains, even forgetting their own good deeds, but the account of the prince is clearly recorded, which shows that China people really think so.
Judging from the experience of good and evil that we have observed, if Mencius actually says that human nature is good from experience, it is obviously closing his eyes and denying the evil of the other half. You say that human nature is good, why doesn't his evil count? Isn't this an obvious fraud? Since human nature can be painted as good, why can't Xunzi take out the evil of the other half and call it the evil of human nature? With Mencius' observation ability, how can he be so negligent in seeing a person's good and evil nature? Therefore, when we discussed this issue earlier, we pointed out that the goodness and evil of human nature here are not empirical and perceptible, and Mencius' good of human nature is a pure logical assumption. It is precisely because in the observation of human experience, good and evil are always accompanied by uncertainty. For such a constantly changing phenomenon world, you can't tell the components of good and evil at all. Therefore, as a theoretical viewpoint and a theoretical thought, Mencius pushed the empirical facts to the background, thus directly putting forward a logical starting point, that is, the assumption that human nature is good. Of course, the assumption can be arbitrary, but if human nature is really evil, then the rationality of this assumption becomes a problem. Just because human nature is mixed with good and evil, it is possible to make the assumption that human nature is good. It is because of the mixture of good and evil that Xunzi can make the assumption that human nature is evil. Xunzi's view is also a hypothesis, which is a negative assumption of Mencius' good nature.
"Hypothesis" is based on certain facts, but as a hypothesis, there is no need to set facts everywhere, nor is it subject to empirical facts. Mencius put forward the hypothesis that human nature is good, which laid the foundation for the establishment of his educational view. Mencius believes that human education is the process of promoting good, and Xunzi can also establish a set of educational theories from evil, and thinks that human education is the process of correcting evil in human nature.
So we believe that there are both good and evil in human nature, which is an empirical fact. Morality should deal with these empirical facts, but theory should go beyond empirical facts to achieve universal principles. The two propositions of good human nature or evil human nature are only the assumptions of the logical starting point of the ideological system of the two thinkers, which are concepts beyond empirical facts and have little to do with moral concepts.
In this way, whether the "four ends" is a hypothesis or not, it does have such a meaning, but the four ends directly lead to the discussion of moral concepts, and human nature is the rule for discussing problems in social life. Therefore, we say that the starting point of Mencius' moral view is four ends, which already contains the meaning that four ends are a hypothesis. Because human nature has four sides, from an empirical point of view, an outsider may not know it himself, so the discussion must have a logical starting point. This is the "four-terminal" theory. I will assume that you have four ends in your mind, of course, other contents are also possible. At a higher level, these assumptions are arbitrary.
In order to discuss the moral phenomenon, Mencius first assumed the existence of this four-terminal, why not three-terminal, not five-terminal, because his theory only needs four-terminal, and on the basis of four-terminal, he can draw the conclusion that there is benevolence and courtesy in human nature, otherwise the transcendental existence of the internal moral law is impossible, and Mencius' moral theory will not develop further.
As we mentioned above, Confucius' moral outlook lacks theoretical basis. Confucius just asked you to do it and let people see it in a behaviorist way. However, due to the lack of theoretical basis, the fundamental reason of morality cannot be explained clearly. Confucius' theory is practical and external observation, but the root of the moral value established by Mencius lies in the heart. Although Mencius' view made up for the basic deficiency of Confucius' theory, it made a great change in Confucius' concept, turning the original behaviorism into "psychologism", and morality lies in the human heart and its consciousness.
So how did this inner one come from? In fact, Mencius was a theorist more than two thousand years ago. If he is a modern logician, he can completely answer that this "four-terminal" is my hypothesis, a hypothesis. However, since it is your hypothesis, it depends on Mencius' level. With his level and eloquence, he is sure to debate this issue. But Mencius did not take the road of logicism, but took another road, thinking that these four ends are inherent in the human heart. Mencius said, "Everyone has a heart that can't bear others" (Chapter 6 of Teng Wengong). Judging from the original text of Mencius, it is a possibility to break sentences at will, which is a full-name judgment, but there is no time, place or way to bear other people's hearts, so it shows that it is universal, whether in time, scope or expression. Since it is a function without time limit and scope limit, it must be universal and eternal. Since it is universal and eternal, it is not a kind of human nature formed later, but developed in some way the day after tomorrow. It is innate, even innate. This has formed a major feature of Mencius' moral outlook, which we call innate and transcendental.
But what does this so-called apriori mean? For an individual, "congenital" means not acquired, but born. But for a "class", that is, human beings, the problem is not so simple.
"Innate" can be interpreted in many ways.
Buddhism, for example, can be understood this way. All people, in fact, all things, have Buddha nature. To put it simply, Buddha's nature means being one with everything in the world, and everyone can be one with everything in the world. Life includes the whole world, so people naturally have four ends. In addition, it seems to be recognized that this kind of congenital is the result of God, which can be put in by God for you or created by God at one time. In short, it is a divine power, almost heaven, not a person. These two explanations have existed since ancient times. The explanation of Buddhism is too abstruse to be explained clearly in one or two sentences. The concept of God's creation is too vulgar and is a low-level belief.
For the innate explanation that is more in line with the modern meaning, that is, the more scientific explanation, it is probably best to explain unconscious psychology. When it comes to unconsciousness and subconsciousness, it is generally attributed to Freud, but Freud's view is too limited. The best explanation in this respect should be Jung's (Carl Gustav Jung, 1875- 196 1) viewpoint on collective unconsciousness. The so-called collective unconsciousness: Jung believes that there are individual unconsciousness and collective unconsciousness in unconsciousness. Jung believes that the collective unconscious is the deepest and most powerful part of personality, and it is a genetic tendency formed by thousands of years of experience accumulated by human ancestors.
That is to say, in people's minds, that is, in people's unconscious, there are thousands of years of civilization history, millions of years of human history, and even the historical accumulation of pre-human history. These historical accumulations are obtained in the process of formation, but they are inherent to modern individuals, that is to say, people are formed on the basis of the whole human class consciousness. Then the content accumulated in class consciousness is the innate content of modern individuals. From this perspective, Mencius only studied the concept of modern people, but this is only a dating. The innate appearance in this dating doesn't mean that it was really created by God, but it is actually just something left over by ancestors, just an essence.
In this way, we return to the same question of good and evil of human nature. From experience, people can be good, why can't they be evil with four tails and five tails? Mencius chose four ends as the starting point of morality among countless ends of good and evil, which is actually a logical assumption.
But Mencius formed his own theoretical system after such theoretical logic processing. Whether Mencius realized the logical connotation is uncertain, but his way of dealing with problems can be explained by modern scientific methods. He extracted a logical hypothesis from the unchangeable residence phenomenon as the starting point of his research, and used different hypotheses in different problem domains. Mencius has a number of theoretical hypotheses, and a viewpoint and system are derived from each theoretical hypothesis. He actually handled his theoretical research according to the principles in modern logic, but he couldn't explain it clearly. It doesn't matter, as long as he does it, there will always be results.