Critical analysis of Mengzi (1)

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I love Mengzi. He is one of the ancient philosophers who have influenced me. But ever since college, I never touched his writing again. I have been wondering if my experiences in the past few years would lead me to different ideas about this work. I decided to analyze Mengzi's writing using socrates's approach. To me, socrates's approach is to systematically analyze the proposition of a statement. I always think that the proposition of a statement is more valuable than the statement itself. Proposition is what has been accepted at that point of time and location. A statement is a reinforcement of ideas, and not all the statement would be accepted.

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孟子见梁惠王。王曰：“叟不远千里而来，亦将有以利吾国乎？”孟子对曰：“王何必曰利？亦有仁义而已矣。王曰‘何以利吾国’？大夫曰‘何以利吾家’？士庶人曰‘何以利吾身’？上下交征利而国危矣。万乘之国弒其君者，必千乘之家；千乘之国弒其君者，必百乘之家。万取千焉，千取百焉，不为不多矣。苟为后义而先利，不夺不餍。

The basic translation of this paragraph is the following:

Mengzi met King Lianghui. King asked: Since you travelled thousands of kilometers to see me, you must have some ideas that can gain profit to our country. Mengzi said: I have nothing that is profitable, but kindness.

King always wants to gain profit for his country, governers want to gain profit for their family and ordinary people would want gain profit for themselves. This actually endangers a country. For a country with a ten thousands of horses, a rebel has to own at least thousands of horses. If everybody seeks for profitable things, rebels will emerge. They would never satisfy until they deprive others from their profitable things. On the other hand, people with kindness would never abondon their relatives and their king. So, as a king, you only have to ask for the kindness.

Mengzi sounded wise and the King sounded needy. But Mengzi had some propositions that would be wrong.

1. A well respected king would have a strong country. Well, it really depends. King Lianghui was the king of Wei, one of the seven countries in the Zhangguo dynasty (476BC). Wei was a strong country until 340BC when Qing defeated it. During Zhangguo dynasty, the seven countries had a lot of wars. If I were King Lianghui, my priority would also be the integrity of Wei and dependableness of military forces. Qing is far from a well respected king. But he finally defeated all other countries.

2. What king wants is what all people want. That could be true. But was kings always considered role models in the history? Through out human history, crown symblizes those who are greedy and tawdry. I truly doubt that if there is any King who doesn't want profitable ideas for his country. But people are more diverse. Some want love and some want show their kindness.

Now, Mengzi sounded only partially right. If there is only one country and if the nation considers the king as a role model, he could be right.

* A trivial observation: King Lianghui said if you travelled this far, you must have good ideas. He assumed that the efforts equal to the outcomes. But what is the connection between travel and idea? I travelled a lot of places, but I rarely had any good ideas.....

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