Ep. 315: Mengzi (Mencius) on Virtuous Leaders (Part One)

0:07 Mark: You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who at one point set on doing a philosophy for a living, but then thought better

0:14 Seth: of it and then ended up doing it.

0:17 Mark: Our Questions for episode 315 are something like what's the best way to behave and to rule? We're continuing to look at the Confucian philosopher Mencius, aka Mengzi from the late 4th century BCE. For more information, please see partially examined life.com. this is Mark Linsenmayer with just enough talent to be put to death in Madison, Wisconsin.

0:40 Seth: This is Seth Paskin desiring what I do not. Wait. This is Seth Paskin desiring what I do not know not to desire. Wait. This is Seth Paskin desiring what my intuitions tell me I should not desire. In Austin, Texas.

0:57 Wes: This is Wes Alwan taking the responsibility for the heavy weight of the world. In Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1:04 Dylan: This is Dylan Casey contemplating water falling down the side of a mountain in Madison, Wisconsin.

1:12 Seth: Are there mountains in Madison?

1:14 Dylan: No, there are not.

1:15 Mark: More mengzi. I vote we call them Mengzi this time instead of Mencius. We don't have the bad influence of Krishna.

1:22 Seth: No, I kind of like that where we got Mengzi, Laozi, Kongzi, Mozi, or however the last part of it is pronounced then it. It actually makes it all come together a lot more nicely than we're using this tzu appellation that means master or teacher. And so then it becomes much more consistent instead of Confucius and Mencius. And this, it's like Meng Tzu, Lao Tzu then makes a lot more sense to me.

1:56 Mark: So we had last time chosen books 2, 4 and 6, but some of us had looked at more of it. I kind of assumed that we would open it up. So the whole book was fair game one through seven. But I don't know if you guys actually read anything additional since last time.

2:11 Dylan: No, I looked at seven.

2:13 Mark: Yeah, seven is some nice aphorisms. It kind of sums up a lot some of the points that were made earlier. So they're sort of good second things to reference. But I. I actually just was able to listen to the previous episode and kind of.

2:26 Seth: We.

2:26 Mark: We didn't actually cover that much. We got the sprouts right, the potential of virtue. And we got a lot of filiality in part one with our guest and we worked through chapter six, which was more about human nature and our tendencies. The Mohists seem to think that there really is no built in human nature and we could just adapt any which way. But Mengzi wants To say no, we tend toward virtue that can be corrupted anyway. So there's room more to talk about things that can get in the way of that and what it actually means. And is virtue one thing? And how easy is virtue? Still, about moral psychology, I assume we would probably focus more overall on the political stuff, which we really didn't get to so much last time. But it all, as with these other figures, kind of meshes together.

3:15 Seth: Right.

3:15 Mark: If you are a virtuous person, then you're going to be an effective leader. And that's just the way it is. There's no Machiavellian thought of, you know, you actually have to set personal virtue aside to get shit done. No, it's like if you're a virtuous person, everyone will be attracted to you. They'll gather around you if you invade them, they can't wait to be invaded. They'll throw up their arms celebrating your invasion.

3:37 Dylan: Yeah, it's definitely the case that being virtuous and cultivating oneself is part of being a good ruler. And I would say that a big chunk of this is trying to convince people of that. Even to the extent that there's a kind of metaphysics, naturalism, about what it means to be cultivation of virtues. And it's not just leaders. It seems to me like understanding what it means to be a good citizen, that's part of being along with the way. It's not contemplative. The good life isn't about serenity or any of those things. It's about an accord with the way. And then because these virtues in these virtues features a kind of public civility both as a ruler and as an individual, it seems just like inherently political.

4:26 Seth: Definitely. I think we touched on this in the last episode, talking about how the threads that we picked up from so called Chinese philosophy are inherently political in a way that our notion of Western epistemology and metaphysics and stuff might be somehow seen as removed from that. But what you were saying, Dylan, we keep coming back to this notion of there being some kind of. There's a sprout. So there's definitely the developmental aspect and the nurturing, the cultivation which says something about virtue. And that doesn't take place in a vacuum.

It takes place in some kind of a social construct which frequently is referred to in all the texts we've read about the family. Now, how they interpret obligations and responsibilities of that is a little bit different. But when I was reading through, based on Mark's recommendation, just some of the stuff in 7 comes back to this notion of humaneness, which takes us all the way back to. I think it was two. Something about the child falling in the well. And you just would not stand and watch a child fall into a well. It's part of your nature to find that to be somehow repellent.

And so I really do think there's this developmental kind of continuum from the individual, the family, the mother or the parents, the siblings, that's intended to kind of propagate and attention to the humaneness that you feel in your familial relations is intended somehow to transfer to social relations and to public relations and in turn inform the leader as to how they should govern.

5:59 Dylan: What Seth was just talking about made me think a lot of 7A15. This idea that we have natural abilities, but then they get developed. All the virtues are rooted in the natural. Mengzi says, what people are able to do without having learned it is an expression of original good ability. What they know without having to think about it is an expression of original good knowledge. There are no young children who do not know enough to love their parents. And there are none who, as they grow older, do not know enough to respect their older brothers, to be affectionate toward those close to one. That is humaneness. And to have respect for elders. That is rightness. All that remains is to extend these to the entire world.

6:38 Seth: It's exactly what I was thinking of when I said that. I thought 7A 15 and 7A 17 went together perfectly in that respect.

6:46 Mark: This is making me think of 6B2, which is really just asking the question, how easy is virtue?

6:52 Wes: Right?

6:52 Mark: You'd think that if it's inborn, then it's just a matter of, like, if we are crops and we're sprouts and we're going to grow into our greatest form. Unless somebody pisses on us and throws dirt on us. You know that as long as we get the normal upbringing, then we should do fine. Somebody asks, is it true that all human beings are capable of becoming a Yao or a Shun? In other words, a sage? Mengzi said it is true. Well, I've heard that King Wen was 10ft tall while Tang was 9ft tall. I am 9ft 4 inches tall, yet all I can do is eat millet. What shall I do to become a Yao or a Shun?

What is there to do but just to do it? This is Mengzi's answering. Here we have a man who is not strong enough to lift a chicken. Here's a man who lacks strength. If he now says he can lift a Hundred Jun, He's a man of strength. Why should one regard not yet having mastered something as a calamity? It is just that one has not yet done it. Here's the important to walk slowly behind an older brother is called fraternal. To walk quickly ahead of an older brother is called unfraternal. Is there anyone who is unable to walk slowly? It is just that he does not do it.

The way of Yao and Shun was that of filial and fraternal duty. That is all. By wearing the clothes of Yao, speaking the words of Yao, and performing the actions of Yao, you become Yao. By wearing the clothes of Zhi, speaking the words of Zhi and performing the actions of Zhi, you become Zhi. We have all these great models. Just follow them. How hard is it to just take the lead of your parents and your elder brothers? Come on, at least makes it sound. Here.

8:14 Wes: Dress for the habits that you want. This is one that makes it look a bit like willpower. Although one could interpret this as well as just as being about habituation in other places, it really looks to be about environment, right? So we're all naturally good. We have this natural tendency towards goodness. But the 6A7 abundance will make us good and adversity will make us bad of certain sorts. And he compares this to differences in soil and rain, kind of the climate and the environment, which is a picture that looks a little bit like some of the other sages or some of the others who've said we're not fundamentally good or bad.

We just can be made either by environmental differences. So it's a bit subtle because Mencius is saying, well, we're naturally good, then we can be turned off course by. By bad influences. So that at one point he compares it right to the cutting down of a tree. All things being equal, we will tend towards goodness. In this case, it looks like, is it willpower? This to me, makes the account look a bit inconsistent.

9:21 Dylan: I'm taking him attributing it to nature as being part of making accessible to everybody. But that doesn't remove the hierarchical nature of sageliness or the ability of people, possibly even their inherent abilities to accomplish maybe even some of the virtues. There's a consistent stratification and roles that you fit into as part of the way. I'm saying that, and I'm wondering if I'm quite right about it in terms of the gradations of the core virtues. Like in terms of just being goodness. Right.

9:57 Wes: It's 6A8 where I was talking about where he's talking about the. I don't think we talked about the axe and the tree before. Yeah. So people see a barren mountain and they might suppose it's never been wooded. And then Mencius will say, but how could this be the nature of the mountain? So it is also with what is preserved in a human being. Could it be that anyone who should lack the mind of humaneness and rightness, if one lets go of the innate good mind, this is like taking an axe to a tree. At this point, he's not comparing it to having bad lack of nutrients in the soil.

Right. It's something more dramatic and more active. But if one lets go to the good, the innate good mind, this is like taking an axe to a tree, being cut down day after day. Can one's mind remain beautiful? So the idea here now is it's almost you have to damage yourself on a daily basis in order to keep the good down. Given the rest that one gets in the day and the night and the effect of the calm morning qi, one's likes and dislikes will still resemble those of other people, but barely so. And then one can become fettered and destroyed by what one does during the day.

So I think again of habituation here. If this fettering occurs repeatedly, the effect of the night QI will no longer be enough to allow one to preserve his mind and he will be at scant removed from the animals. And seeing this, one might suppose that he never had the capacity for goodness. But can this be a human being's natural tendency? So this makes it sound like you have to work very, very hard on a daily basis to tamp down the natural goodness that might otherwise naturally come forth, express itself, which is an interesting idea. Right. So, you know, the alternate idea is that to be virtuous requires.

Right. I start out as a baby with a lot of untamed instincts. Being virtuous and healthy requires cultivating all that. Otherwise, all things being equal, I'm going to be an animal. And on this account, no, you'll naturally do fine unless you work really hard at undermining the natural goodness.

11:57 Seth: My interpretation of this is not that you have to work hard at it. It's like I think about external forces. So I take very seriously the analogy to sprouts and growth. You've heard the phrase nature will find a way, right? You throw a seed in dirt, it gets light and water. It has dirt, light and water, those three things, it will grow. That's just what happens. Things grow in nature when given suitable conditions. Again, it's just basically soil, water and light. Imagine that the seed doesn't fall into dirt. It falls on the street, on concrete, and it doesn't grow.

Would you say that the seed didn't want to grow or didn't have the capacity to grow? No, you would say it did not have the conditions that it needed. Or it falls in the shade. And so you get a weakly scraggly little thing that's reaching out, trying to find instead of a healthy, strong. That's got nothing to do with the innate capacities or the innate potentialities of that thing. It has to do with the conditions that are imposed upon it. And he's right to say we're not talking about existential trauma once, but it's like suppression of the daily instincts.

He says this, you know, in other places, Right. Like, you know, if they're starving and underfed and under duress. Right. They're not going to flourish. And it's just like that. If you have a plant, you clear away something that's blocking its light, it will flourish. If you put nutrients into the soil. If it's in a rough patch, it will flourish. So I think that analogy holds very strongly, and he's quite literally saying we are all very much like seedlings that have the potential to sprout into these fully realized beings.

13:30 Wes: Yeah, that's 6A7. I was trying to draw a contrast between these two passages. Okay, so 6A7. There may be differences in the yield. This is because of the fertility of the soil. The nourishment of the rain and dew and the human effort invested are not the same. We're innately good, but our environments might be different. This sounds like a more like upbringing type of account. Did we have a good upbringing? We were where we nourished properly, emotionally, intellectually. Everything else develop the right habits. You know, in the Axe account, it looks a little bit different.

So the tree gets cut down. Right. It's no longer just about the soil, and it looks like something more active and destructive. And then this talk of what one does during the day, destroying one's chi, this gets a little bit more at the concept of habituation and how one's own behavior. So it's no longer just one's environment. Right. One's own behavior becomes part of the environment, let's put it that way.

14:28 Mark: Right.

14:28 Wes: So one's own daily practice can become the thing that tamps down one's goodness.

14:36 Seth: That thing can be something, a habit that you practice, or it could be a job that you do. Right. Like if you're out there 12 hours a day hoeing the field with, you know, manually trying to lay the grounds for rice or whatever it is you're doing. That can be soul crushing too. That's not habituation that you choose in the same way that you're talking about perhaps choosing to do something different. But I think that's what he's kind of pointing at is that if people are engaged constantly in laborious toils that don't allow them to flourish or don't give them the space to at least conceptualize or understand or try to realize what flourishing might look like, then they're stunted.

15:13 Wes: He seemed pretty pro toil though, didn't he?

15:16 Dylan: You have to put the work in,

15:18 Wes: like attending to one's tasks, for instance. Or maybe I'm confusing people at this

15:23 Mark: point because that's a Mozi thing.

15:25 Wes: Did he not seem like he was? Yeah, it's a Mozi thing. But there is talk of.

15:30 Mark: In this, of doing your utmost is a. Is a fundamental Confucian thing. So whatever that means. But that doesn't mean, like Seth was saying, making yourself suffer for the most part. I think he has a similar view to Mozi in that deprivation, suffering and so endless toil that is just breaks your spirit would be an example of that is a great way to not be virtuous. It's a great way to no longer be sensitive to moral things. That Mengzi is also about sensitivity.

15:57 Wes: But does he talk about that?

15:58 Mark: I believe so, but I couldn't tell you which one I'm talking about.

16:02 Dylan: I'm just looking at 7 right now at the 7A1. By fully developing one's mind, one knows one's nature. Knowing one's nature, one knows heaven. But there's this language of developing, exercising one's activities just the same way we've talked about this with that. It's like virtue ethics. You do it. We just had a quote earlier, a version of just if you're going to be good, just be good. If you're going to be like a sage, just act like a sage kind of thing. So all of that involves an activity of doing. Now maybe the question is, maybe that's just not the same thing as toil that you're talking about or taking care of one tasks.

16:39 Mark: The Nike ad campaign is just do it attributed to Mencius.

16:44 Wes: We know what he says in one and so this is actually on page 11. The people lacking a constant means of livelihood will lack constant minds. And when they lack constant minds, there's no dissoluteness depravity, deviance or excess to which they will not succumb. This whole relationship between being economically unstable, not having basic living standards, and then lacking the ability to become virtuous. I think that's very clear in this. But you know, I thought that other places, the idea that work was something positive. But I don't know. Should we go to the ox thing?

17:17 Mark: Yeah, I forgot that this one is like six pages long. One A7. It's one of the two places I found another in seven which is talking about how the sprouts actually work. So actually, let me first read 7B31. Mengzi said, all human beings have that which they cannot bear. Getting this attitude to reach to what they can bear is humaneness. In other words, you see the kid about to fall in the well, I can't bear that. Now extend that. So you'll actually be sensitive to suffering of everybody. All human beings have that which they will not do. Getting this attitude to reach to that which they will do is rightness.

So we said at the end of the last discussion that actually just being like, I'm not going to do that, that's beneath my dignity. That we all have some sort of gut reaction to being insulted. Indignation. So how do we get indignant about all wrong behavior? When human beings are able to bring to fulfillment the mind that desires not to harm others, their humaneness is inexhaustible. When they're able to bring their fulfillment to the mind that refuses to break through or to jump over a wall, their rightness is inexhaustible. If they can bring to fulfillment their reluctance to accept unsuitable modes of address, there will be no place in which they fail to manifest rightness.

Don't let somebody call you. Don't let a five year old call you by your first name. As soon as you do that, you're not in touch with propriety. So let's use that as sort of the general point which is then made in this earlier story of the king with the ox, which is, I think, the much more famous part of the thing. If somebody else wants to tell that.

18:43 Wes: So Hu He said that while the king was seated in the upper part of the hall, someone let an ox pass the hall below in the courtyard. On seeing this, the king asked where the ox was going and was told that it was being taken to serve as a blood sacrifice. In the consecration of a bell. The king said, spare it, I cannot bear its trembling. Like one who, though blameless, is being led to the execution ground. Asked whether in that case the consecration of the bell should be dispensed with, the king said, how can it be dispensed with? Substitute a sheep instead.

So Mencius said, with such a mind, one has what it takes to become a true king. And then the idea as we move through the passage is that, you know, this is the seed of the kind of humaneness that the king needs because it can be broadened, as Mark was saying, broadened and extended more generally. And it can be something that. Where you don't actually have to see the animal being led to slaughter and trembling in order to. To have that humaneness stimulated. That's part of the problem, not being prompted to be humane or sympathetic unless one sees some dramatic scene like that.

So the extension involves. Right. Expanding the scope and also being able to do it when one is not in the presence of the suffering, being able to imagine suffering from afar.

19:59 Mark: Yeah, I think we've talked in the past about the problems with ethics that are based on compassion. Like, it seems like, yeah, of course we want compassion, and that's something in human nature, but it has to get beyond that or else it's only the stuff right in front of you that you end up reacting to. And so, yeah, you could have, let's spare one Thanksgiving turkey, as in our natural ritual, as we carpet bomb some other country or mass execute all the other turkeys or whatever. The piece of hypocrisy you're trying to bring to bear.

20:28 Seth: I was just going to say something similar, Mark. What I would expect to see in conjunction with this is some kind of notion of justice. It still feels like it's very much associated with this kind of individual recognition. So there is a sense in which you have to recognize that if somebody's not sprouting and flourishing the way that they should be, that they were not appropriately nourished and didn't get enough sun and dirt and water, what have you. But it seems like it's just saying, yeah, just make sure you don't put those people in charge.

Right. If they're defective, then just avoid them. Maybe the implication is that somebody who is appropriately nourished and has developed the appropriate virtues can come in and somehow correct that situation. But that is one thing that seems to be, I won't want to say missing, because missing implies a hierarchy and a gap and a structure that we are imposing on it. But what we typically think of in terms of justice, political philosophy and so

21:19 Dylan: forth, the political concern is one of, is there peace? What are the sources of people thriving and the virtues of the rulers being that they are concerned with the health and well being of the people. For instance, the notion that there are other candidates for kinds of good rulers or good ruling, that's not a question at all. Without a question. The form of ruling that all ruling should be aiming towards is the rule of the sage. There's no consideration that there's other possible forms or arrangements of rule and there are duties and responsibilities of the sage as the sage ruler.

But that's ruling in fact, I mean that's effectively what Mengzi is arguing is that proper ruling is the ruling of the great sages. And I'm going to describe to you what that's like and what the features of that are. Everything else is just bad ruling. There aren't kinds of it, there aren't versions of it. There isn't the whole the rule of the many, the rule of the few, the rule of the wealthy, the rule of the people. There's none of that.

22:21 Seth: It's more about accepting the structure that exists and getting the right people in there as opposed to questioning the structure.

22:27 Dylan: Or to me at least there is no structure to question in the sense of, well, there could be another structure.

22:34 Mark: That's not a consideration, the corresponding thing. So what you're talking about is like Aristotle talks about how yes, you could have a democracy and maybe that could be a good democracy or it could go tyranny and you could have a good oligarchy, but that could be a bad, you know, there's, there's a good and bad version. The aristocracy is a good one, oligarchy is the bad one and the same with the monarch versus the tyrant. So you would think with all these different kingdoms, you know, little kingdoms, they'd be trying different stuff, but at least we have no evidence of that.

What they are trying the analog I think of that is what is the priority? You know, one of the things I was reading is that Mengzi might have been the first one. I think Mozi is a good candidate to actually say the people are more important than the rulers. The state is all about serving the people. And that that is actually a really revolutionary notion. So instead of saying are we picking democracy, are we picking monarchy? It's are we picking a government ruled by necessity by the few for the many or are we picking by the few for the few? And it's all about these few competing with each other, Game of Thrones style or whatever, for how much land they can take up and who's going to be the Emperor.

23:40 Dylan: Yeah, what's the proper object of ruling? And Mengzi and Mozi are both about it's the flourishing of the people. And there are several cases where in Mengzi where he's denigrating concerns about power need to be concerned about the people. In fact, at some level the healthy flourishing community is one in which the citizens, the members of the community basically don't even ever think about the ruler. They might not even know who it is. That would be sort of the best form of sagely rulership.

24:13 Mark: Sounds like you're identifying a way that he was influenced by Lao Tzu because that was completely the best kind of ruler is the shadowy figure.

24:21 Dylan: When you say shadowy figure it makes me think of someone who's working behind the scenes and stuff like that. And I guess what I was trying to think of was those sections in Mengzi to me are about it's so aligned with the way in which ruling ought to happen that the people who are participating in society are just doing their thing. They're not feeling the pinch of rulership, it's just working.

24:48 Mark: Yeah. All that kind of fits together with virtue is easy if things are going well, if the way is strong in the land. Even though he doesn't say like the Taoists, non coercive action, it sure seems like that you're providing a great model. You're making it easy for people to want to follow you. One of these other ones about, you know, that Sounds like Mozi 7, 8, 23 let their fields be well cultivated and their taxes be light so the people are enriched, blah blah blah. You know, when all these things are as plentiful as water and fire, how could there be any among the people who are not humane?

So it's not even just saying that if they're deprived then it's going to be hard for them to be humane. But if they have plenty, how could they not? So get out of their way, make the economy flourish and you're going to get virtue as a natural result. I noticed one other interesting one sort of along these lines though. 7A18 Mengzi said persons who possess the intelligence of virtue and the skills of wisdom are often those who have endured sickness and suffering. The solitary and unsupported minister or the concubine's son respond to danger by keeping control of their minds and become profound through anxiously anticipating calamities.

Thus they achieve a penetrating understanding. So it seems like suffering doesn't necessarily blunt your ability to be virtuous. It could actually bring you out of your torpor. So that you exert yourself. And this seems. There's a stoic element in here.

26:13 Seth: There's definitely a stoic element, but that seems kind of at cross purposes. I don't want to say it's at cross purposes, but like, those would be examples of where the external conditions for flourishing were not present. I mean, is he saying we accord extra virtue or extra recognition to somebody who's virtuous when they were not in the conditions that were conducive to virtue, as opposed to somebody who was raised with all the appropriate nurturing and so forth? I don't know. I read that and I thought about it. It just feels kind of. I don't know, it felt a little out of place. I didn't know what to do with it.

26:45 Mark: Yeah. So while it's easy to be virtuous in the basic way, maybe it's easy to be virtuous when things are going well, but it's exceptional to be virtuous when you actually have some ethical difficulties. You have conflicting duties, you have a bad situation going on. That's usually where the conflicts come from. Right. If one of your leaders is telling you to do a wrong thing or something like that. And so, yeah, I think there are several passages in here that give room for exceptionalism, that the sage is the one that is going to be good even when the way does not rule in the world.

And so there's talk of like, well, what does that mean? And so concretely, for instance, you know, you'd expect reciprocity. You do something good for somebody, they'll do something. But what if they don't? They return your kindness with scorn. Well, he says, well, look within, you know, that's at least sort of his version of turn the other cheek. There's several passages that are about that of, you know, at least the first several times you try to do something nice for somebody and they don't respond well, maybe you didn't do it quite right. Maybe you weren't strictly following the way.

Maybe you need to understand more about them. You need to take it upon yourself. And I think that's a good way to. That's a specific situation which is kind of like when the whole society is fucked up. What do you do? Well, look within. Be a good sage in private. If you can't actually cause good effects in the world due to circumstances. Do we have another 10 minutes in us about moral psychology? And then we'll turn to the politics for part two.

28:14 Dylan: I mean, in the same kind of cultivation 7A40 stood out to me, there are five ways in which the noble person teaches others. One is by exerting a transforming influence, like a timely reign. One is by causing their virtue to be fulfilled. One is by furthering their talents. One is by answering questions. Another is by enabling them to cultivate and correct themselves on their own. So those all align with a kind of cultivating, a kind of climate around a person who is trying to cultivate their virtue, affecting their environment, and then also prodding them and energizing them. And then I guess the last one is like putting them in situations in which they can exercise their virtue for themselves.

28:58 Mark: Yeah. This is one that just begs to be made into a sermon that actually gives examples of each of these four things. Like, here's the way that you can be a good older brother, a good leader, a good teacher. Because I'm not really sure what the difference is between causing someone virtue to be fulfilled and furthering their talents. Put them in situations where they can succeed.

29:21 Dylan: There's another one regarding this naturalness question. In 7B24, Mengzi says the responses of the mouth to flavors, of the eye, to colors, of the ear, to sounds, of the nose to fragrances, and of the four limbs to comfort are our nature. But there is destiny in them. And the noble person does not call them nature. Humaneness between parent and child, rightness between ruler and minister, propriety between guest and host, wisdom for the worthy, and the way of heaven for the sage, our destiny. But our nature is in them, and the noble person does not call them destiny. So there's a very like Lao Tzu contrast there as well.

29:58 Wes: Yeah. So what does that mean?

29:59 Dylan: I took this to be a way of saying nature is our destiny and our destiny is our nature. And talking about in the first ones were all things that we would attribute normally to nature, to the world acting upon us and reminding us and making us trying to think that there is destiny in them. That is, there is, when I think of destiny is that this is something we're aimed at. This is the way in which we are pointed. The second group of things are all things that we'd normally think of as being human things. Those interactions, those activities aligning, not being essentially fate and the way in which the rivers things go, but there's also nature in them, that those are a result of what we are as natural beings.

And to me, that dovetails with a big theme for Mengzi, that our characteristics, our fundamental characteristics as human beings are natural. And there's a kind of naturalness argument going on.

30:57 Wes: I'M confused because he's argued for the goodness of human nature. It's like the downward course of water, right. And it includes all of these things like propriety and rightness and all that. We naturally tend towards those things, unless there's some interference with it. And then there's this. The responses of mouth to flavors of the eye to colors. I mean, it sounds a little bit like the passage on taste where. Right. We all have the same, which is 6A7. We all fundamentally have the same taste, which I took to be something aesthetic. But there have to be fundamental cognitive similarities between people in order to ground any normative stuff. But what is, what is destiny? That's what I don't get.

31:40 Mark: I'm tempted to give a sort of, maybe too modern an interpretation of it and think about free will just as a way of. If he's responding to Mozi saying those Confucians believe in destiny, screw them, it makes them not do anything. And Mengzi is saying, you know, you're misrepresenting. I understand. We have a view of it's human nature to flow upward, to be good. It's human destiny to have these aims of pleasing your parents and following your brother and whatever. But still it's better for us as agents to think of, you know, the just do it thing. If you just think of them as your nature and your destiny, that might make you passive and not actually do your utmost. The noble person does not call them these things. You, you just do it.

32:26 Wes: I don't know. Is destiny associated with nurture? Could you turn this into a nature nurture thing? Right. And it goes back to the whole argument about innateness, which was basically a nature nurture argument. Mencius's opponents want to say that things like rightness or propriety are not innate. Right. And he wants to say that they are innate. This kind of sounds reminiscent of that saying that. Well, it's kind of both. It sounds like maybe destiny is associated with the nurture side of the equation.

32:52 Mark: I don't know. It sounds pretty nature Y to me. They both sound nature Y. They both sound like things outside of our control.

33:00 Wes: Well, destiny in the sense of. Right. The word in early modern philosophy is necessity, about all the influences that act on us, that, you know, all the deterministic influences that act on us. But you could parcel those out into external cultural, social influences. The thing that everyone's obsessed with now, right? Everything is socially constructed versus nature versus biology. And then the question is again, it's nature and nurture. It's Both. It always sounds like the right answer. It's got to be a mixture of both and they work together. You know, I don't know if I'm reading that onto this in order to try to understand it.

33:34 Dylan: I do think that the way we're clarifying it, it's aligned with what we've been talking about earlier. You know, the fundamental, I guess the metaphysics of it is moral psychology. Whichever we have the capabilities, the potentials for all of these things that are in us and there's a natural direction for them, meaning that they will, under conventional circumstances, those potentials will begin to grow in a certain direction. That all sounds like a nature that has a destiny, right? It's teleological. And that's what that section makes me think of is a nature that has a destiny teleological.

34:15 Wes: I was just doing a search on destiny and it actually comes up only a handful of times. It's on page 144, 161 and 164. I think that's why I don't feel so bad now about just not knowing what it is. I think this is really one of the only locations he even talks about it. And I've just looked at the other places and it doesn't, for me, clarify things.

34:36 Mark: So one of them is 7B33, which is 1 that I noticed Mengzi said Yao and Shun had it as their nature. Tang and Wu return to it. In other words, virtue. When every expression of one's countenance and every movement of one's body is exactly in conformity with ritual. This is the ultimate in flourishing virtue. This is all just stuff Confucius said, you know, that we just want to program yourself so you're really in line with what you're supposed to do. The noble person carries out the law and awaits his destiny. That is all. So that's another one. It sort of makes it sound, oh, it's simple, just carry out the law and await your destiny.

But you know, of course, based on what he said earlier here, no, it actually requires a lot of training and self training and discipline and routine to get so that you're completely in sync with carrying out the law. But I like the idea that the telos is you're just awaiting your destiny.

35:27 Wes: Well, here's 7A2. Mencius said there is for everything a destiny. But one should follow and accept only what is proper for oneself. Therefore, one who knows destiny does not stand under a wall in danger of collapsing to die in the course of fulfilling the way is a proper destiny. While dying in manacles and fetters is not a proper destiny. So it does not stand around their wall.

35:49 Mark: It's just Mozi. It's responding to Mozi.

35:52 Wes: And now I'm remembering. Mozi was very critical of the Confucian idea of destiny. Right. As fatalism. Didn't he accuse him of being fatalists?

35:59 Mark: So he's responding to that. He's saying they're not fatalists. Yes. Everything has a destiny. But don't be stupid and accept the bad outcomes. You have to do your utmost. Of course.

36:09 Dylan: Yes.

36:10 Seth: But don't be inactive. Just because you have a destiny means you don't throw in the towel and just give up.

36:15 Wes: Yeah.

36:15 Seth: It's not a strong response, but it's a response.

36:18 Mark: And that sounds like a good ending to part one. We'll talk more about the politics. There's one 7A17 that we had a whole other little article on that some of us were excited about. So there's. There's a little leftover moral psychology. I think we'll carry to part two. And then we'll finish up with the politics and the political ethics. Who you should accept gifts from, who you should meet with this kind of stuff. Insofar as we have anything to say about it. He has a lot to say about it. You can get that in your feed as the next thing if you are a partially Examined Life supporter. See you then.