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Selections from Mencius, Books I and II: Mencius's Travels Persuading

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Selections from Mencius, Books I and II: Mencius's Travels Persuading MENCIUS Translation, Commentary, and Notes Robert Eno May 2016 Version 1.0 © 2016 Robert Eno This online translation is made freely available for use in not for profit educational settings and for personal use. For other purposes, apart from fair use, copyright is not waived. Open access to this translation, without charge, is provided at: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/23423 Also available as open access translations of the Four Books The Analects of Confucius: An Online Teaching Translation http://hdl.handle.net/2022/23420 Mencius: An Online Teaching Translation http://hdl.handle.net/2022/23421 The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean: An Online Teaching Translation http://hdl.handle.net/2022/23422 The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean: Translation, Notes, and Commentary http://hdl.handle.net/2022/23424 Cover illustration Mengzi zhushu jiejing 孟子註疏解經, passage 2A.6, Ming period woodblock edition CONTENTS Prefatory Note …………………………………………………………………………. ii Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….. 1 TEXT Book 1A ………………………………………………………………………………… 17 Book 1B ………………………………………………………………………………… 29 Book 2A ………………………………………………………………………………… 41 Book 2B ………………………………………………………………………………… 53 Book 3A ………………………………………………………………………………… 63 Book 3B ………………………………………………………………………………… 73 Book 4A ………………………………………………………………………………… 82 Book 4B ………………………………………………………………………………… 92 Book 5A ………………………………………………………………………………... 102 Book 5B ………………………………………………………………………………... 112 Book 6A ……………………………………………………………………………….. 121 Book 6B ……………………………………………………………………………….. 131 Book 7A ……………………………………………………………………………….. 140 Book 7B ……………………………………………………………………………….. 152 APPENDIXES Glossary of Terms and Texts ……………………………………………………….. 162 Index of Personal Names ……………………………………………………………. 175 Index of Place Names ……………………………………………………………….. 190 Maps ………………………………………………………………………………….. 197 i Prefatory Note on the Translation This translation is an expansion of teaching materials developed for college courses over a period of several decades. When I was teaching, I found it convenient to provide students with translations that fit the terminology and interpretations I would use in class, and, of course, the expense of these materials to students was much less than the cost of books. In later years, I posted course materials online, reducing expense further. Online materials allowed open public access, and I received many messages indicating that the materials were being widely consulted, especially by teachers. I hope this full translation will also be helpful in this way. No one translation is definitive, and scholars who have devoted more specialized study to the Mencius than I have published excellent translations in book form that I would recommend to anyone with a serious interest in the text. D.C. Lau’s 1970 translation, available from Penguin Books, is superb, and I admire my late friend Irene Bloom’s 2009 translation with Columbia University Press. I have consulted these translations throughout, though my interpretations sometimes differ, and I use somewhat different vocabulary. In addition, I have found the rather idiosyncratic 1963 translation by W.A.C.H. Dobson to add insights in a number of cases. I have not, however, attempted to consult all available translations, and I’m sure there are good options others have found that I have missed. Any translation of the Mencius is ultimately indebted to the Chinese commentarial tradition. The earliest commentary that exists for the text is the richly detailed work of Zhao Qi 趙岐 (108-201 CE), and all scholars are reliant on Zhao for many identifications and explanations that no later writer could have supplied. Nevertheless, because no outside confirmation exists for many of Zhao’s assertions, we need to bear in mind that despite being our earliest guide, Zhao was himself four centuries removed from Mencius, and we cannot be sure in each case how reliable his information was. Zhao’s commentary forms part of the most extensive traditional collection of philological comments: the Mengzi Zhengyi 孟子正義 [Corrected interpretations of the Mencius], compiled chiefly by Jiao Xun 焦循 (1763-1820). A very different, largely philosophical commentarial approach is represented by the Song Neo-Confucian, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), whose work I consulted in the helpful Sishu duben 四書讀本 [“Four Books” reader] edition of Jiang Boqian 蔣伯潛 (1892-1956), who himself provides many useful comments. And, like all recent translators, I found the commentary and Modern Chinese translation edition of Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (1909-1992), Mengzi yizhu 孟子譯注 [Mencius: an annotated translation] to be indispensable. When I was an active teacher, I had a frequent platform to express my thoughts about Mencius and his ideas. I have indulged myself here by letting this translation be an alternative platform to convey many of those thoughts in the form of free commentary on the passages. An alternative version of this translation appears online as Mencius: An Online Teaching Translation. The “teaching translation” is differently formatted and lightly glossed, and does not include the commentary sections. While still reflecting my overall perspective, it is intended to serve as a tool for instructors looking for a convenient resource that will not overly try the patience of their students or require them to use up too much valuable class time pointing out the shortcomings of my views. ii Introduction The Mencius (in Chinese, Mengzi 孟子, the book of Master Meng) may be the Classical Chinese philosophical text that most profoundly influenced traditional Chinese culture. Although never granted quite the explicit homage that was given to the Analects (Lunyu) among Confucian works, nor, perhaps, as admired as the two great Daoist texts, the Dao de jing and Zhuangzi, the ideas and arguments in the Mencius have a clarity and literary power that gave them extraordinary impact over time. Although the full force of that impact did not reveal itself until the late Tang and Song Dynasties, over a millennium after Mencius’s death, ultimately the Mencius became a central canonical source for the animating ideas of the Neo- Confucian movement, which, in its several forms, dominated Chinese intellectual life from the thirteenth century through the nineteenth, and survives today in the form of New Confucianism, a growing influence in the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese diaspora. Mencius’s Life The name Mencius, like the name Confucius, is a Latinized version of a Chinese name. Mencius’s real name was Meng Ke 孟軻. (He is referred to by this name only once in the Mencius, in 1B.16.) Mencius’s disciples referred to him as “Master Meng,” which in Chinese was “Mengzi,” turned into “Mencius” by European interpreters of Chinese culture two thousand years after his death. We do not know Mencius’s dates with accuracy, but we do know that he was an old man at the time of his greatest life crisis, in 314, and we estimate his lifetime as falling in the period 380 to 300 (throughout this translation, all dates, unless otherwise specified, are BCE). For about the first 60 years of his life, Mencius seems to have lived quietly, becoming among the most renowned Confucian teachers of his age. Then, sometime before 320, he decided that the time was ripe to renew Confucius’s active effort to persuade the rulers of the increasingly violent Warring States era (453-221) to accept the Confucian Dao and reform the world, and, like Confucius, he began wandering from state to state, trying to find a ruler who would employ him and implement Confucian governance. About 314, he finally secured an appointment as a high advisor to the king of Qi, a strong state that occupied territory northeast of Confucius’s homeland of Lu and Mencius’s own home, the small state of Zou. But, to his dismay, soon after the king showed this strong apparent interest in Confucianism, Qi launched a war to conquer another major state just to the north, Yan. Prior to launching the war, it seems that the king lured Mencius into appearing to approve his aggressive attack, and Mencius apparently concluded that his appointment was actually no more than a public relations ploy on the part of Qi to justify its power play in Yan by claiming the endorsement 1 2 of the most famous Confucian sage of the time. He resigned his position in despair and retired to his home state, where he lived the rest of his life as a teacher. (These events are narrated in the Mencius, mostly in a single series of passages, 2B.8-14.) Although there are gaps in our chronology of Mencius’s biography, there is no figure in Classical China about whom we know more and whom we know so intimately. Although we have a sense of the characters of many people in China’s Classical era, and in some cases tales about them include colorful detail, many of those accounts were formulated decades or centuries after their lifetimes, and many or most cases have the troublesome defect of being obviously fictional, often building dramatic episodes around a few core features associated with the historical person. But the Mencius is not only rich in detail, both the pattern of event and – more important – the consistent texture of Mencius’s speech and behavior make it very difficult to doubt that, on the whole, we see here a portrait drawn from life by those who knew him well. Mencius’s personality is a dominant factor in the Mencius, and the book shows us a brilliant, volatile, charismatic, irritating, self-righteous man, whose intellectual insights can be so keen that his influence is still felt
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