Mencius lived in a politically chaotic age called the Age of Warring States and in a culturally unsettled age when innumerable scholars claimed attention to their ideas.
To stabilize the chaotic society it was inevitable to formulate an absolute valu...
Mencius lived in a politically chaotic age called the Age of Warring States and in a culturally unsettled age when innumerable scholars claimed attention to their ideas.
To stabilize the chaotic society it was inevitable to formulate an absolute value system and it was also necessary to find a firm ground of its absoluteness.
Mencius assumed this task by formulating a value system interpreted as the thought of Righteousness(I-li), based on humanistic ideal which took its root in Tien-tao. Tien-tao is analogous to the laws of nature in modern concept.
Mencius contended that his thought of Righteousness based on the laws of nature has an absolute value.