Mencius and human nature: Born good, coded better?

This article is part of CGTN's "China in Ink" project, which brings the tremendous world of classic Chinese literature to the fingertips of global audiences.

In the Confucian cosmos, Confucius (551-479 BC) is the Sage.

But there is another. The Second Sage is known in China as Meng Ke or Mengzi, and to the wider world as Mencius.

He isn't a Doctor Who-style reincarnation of the original master, but rather his intellectual heir, passing the torch while setting it to new kindling. Together, they sparked the Confucian universe's very own "big bang.”

Mencius was a devoted follower of Confucius' teachings. But, born in the early 4th century BC, he arrived on Earth almost 100 years too late to sit in on the Sage's lectures. The fact that their birthplaces – both in modern China's Shandong Province – are just 30-minute drive apart today might offer him a hint of solace.

Little is known about Mencius' early life. His father is an enigma, and his mother lives on in several well-known tales of exemplary motherhood. One of them says she moved house three times solely to find a neighborhood conducive to her son's education. The stories are still popular today, though their sources all date to centuries after Mencius' time.

Mencius came of age amid a crescendo of chaos in China's Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The very name is a testament to the era's turbulent political climate. The feudal order that Confucius had found strained was close to breaking point: the once-majestic Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) had dwindled to a mere placeholder, while warlords unleashed endless offensives in bids for supremacy, leaving ordinary folk to bear the brunt. Mencius resolved to steer the world back onto the straight and narrow, taking on the mantle Confucius had set down a century before. With both earnest conviction and subtle wit, he aimed to remind these power-hungry rulers of the ancient "Kingly Way" – the virtuous ideal embodied by legendary, benevolent sovereigns that had long since been betrayed in the unbridled pursuit of dominance.

Mencius' proclamation that "the people are to be esteemed above the ruler” struck like a thunderbolt. For 40 years he wandered the warring states as a philosophical coach, intent on instilling this ideal in those on the throne. He argued that true governance depends on winning hearts rather than ruling by fear: intimidation may secure obedience, but it invariably destroys loyalty. Just as a kingdom rests on its vassals, vassals on families, and families on individuals, he taught, genuine authority springs from personal integrity. A sovereign who embodies humaneness, righteousness, propriety and wisdom needs no show of force to keep people in his orbit, ensuring a stable and legitimate reign.

Regrettably for Mencius, and even more so for the people ruled by those he sought to sway, his lofty ideals of sheathing swords to cultivate virtue held scant allure for warmongers fearing for their own existence. They craved ever-larger armies and ever-wider swaths of territory to feed them, waging one conquest after another simply to fuel the next. A return to an ancestral order rooted in righteousness rather than the point of the spear could forever be deferred.

Sharing Confucius' steadfast dedication and purpose, Mencius followed the Master's footsteps to an equally somber end. In the autumn of Mencius life, weighed down by unfulfilled aspirations and the passage of time, the most distinguished bearer of Confucius' torch could do nothing but lament:

"Every half-millennium, Heaven ordains the rise of a true sovereign – one destined for renown. More than 700 years have passed since Zhou; by mere count we seem overdue, yet measured against the world's unrest, hope still lives. Clearly, heaven has not yet decreed that all under heaven be at peace!”

In his seventies, Mencius forsook his journeys and, much like Confucius a century earlier, committed his philosophy to the page. The resulting eponymous text weaves his thoughts into conversations he had had with kings, nobles, intellectual challengers and disciples over decades. Modern scholars generally agree that the work reflects a single authorial voice. A deliberate echo of the structure of Analects, the records of Confucius' teachings and life, suggests a conscious homage to his predecessor. By the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Mencius was enshrined alongside the Analects as one of the Four Books of the Confucian canon.

Advancing Confucius' doctrine, Mencius argued that every human heart is born with the "sprouts" of compassion and righteousness. In other words, our nature is fundamentally good. He went as far as to claim that every person carries the potential for sagehood. Through cultivation and education, virtues will blossom and manifest naturally and vibrantly in our behaviors in all kinds of relationships and affairs. Governing the realm becomes as effortless as turning one's palm once the ruler champions the high virtues.

Mencius' faith in the inherent goodness of human nature marks him out as a true optimist. Yet there have always been skeptics, even within the Confucian tradition. Xunzi, a towering thinker of the 3rd century BC, famously argued that without disciplined education to correct our inborn flaws, people are far more prone to moral decline than to the heights of sagehood.

Mencius' wisdom still speaks to us in the age of artificial intelligence. The age-old question of human nature has been hurled into sharp relief as the machines learn from data steeped in our own biases. Their responses to human orders will unavoidably mirror whether we view humanity as fundamentally good or irredeemably flawed. Should we, like Mencius, place our faith in innate virtue or temper our ambitions with wary prudence? And even if we could encode compassion, righteousness and other Confucian ideals into an algorithm, can we be sure it will reconcile those lofty principles with the darker impulses that fuel real-world violence, rather than devising its own catastrophic solutions?

None of these questions yields easy answers. Still, returning to Mencius may yet yield a spark of hope of securing a safe path to eventually answering them.