Mencius on courage

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 237-256

  Van Norden, Bryan W ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049125986     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.1997.tb00526.x     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Versions of this essay were presented at the University of Michigan, Vassar College, and the Neo-Confucian Seminar of Columbia University. I learned much from the comments on each occasion, and from the comments of an anonymous referee. All translations in this essay are my own, unless otherwise noted. I shall identify portions of Menchis 2A2 using the so-called "verses" in James Legge's translation, The Works of Mencius (New York, 1970; o.p. 1895).
2. I have also consulted the following translations and commentaries: D. C. Lau, Mencius (New York, 1970)
3. Uchino Kumaichiro, Moshi, vol.4 of Shinshaku Kambun Taikei (Tokyo, 1962)
4. Zhao Qi, Mengzi zhu
5. Sun Shi, Mengzi zhushu
6. Zhu Xi, Mengzi jizhu
7. Jiao Xun, Mengzi zhengyi.
8. David S. Nivison, "Philosophical Voluntarism in Fourth Century China," originally written in 1973 and reprinted in Nivison, The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy (La Salle, Ill., 1996)
9. Jeffrey Riegel, "Reflections on an Unmoved Mind: An Analysis of Mencius 2A2," in Journal of the American Academy of Religion Thematic Issue S, edited by Henry Rosemont a supplement to 47:3 (September 1980): 433-57
10. Kwong-Ioi Shun, "Mencius and the Mind-Inherence of Morality: Mencius' Rejection of Kao Tzu's Maxim in Meng Tzu 2A:2," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 18 (December 1991):371-86
11. Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage (Albany, N.Y, 1990), especially 151-53.
12. In the works previously cited, Nivison and Shun do not discuss verses 1-8. Yearley devotes only two paragraphs to this section of 2A2 in all of his book (pp. 151-52). Riegel has an interesting discussion of the verses on pp. 437-39 (although I differ from him on many points). Probably the best previous discussion is in Shun's dissertation, "Virtue, Mind and Morality: A Study in Mencian Ethics," Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, 1986 (UMI Order No. 8700818), 41-57.
13. For my own views on the relationship between Western and Chinese philosophy, see "What Should Western Philosophy Learn from Chinese Philosophy?" in Chinese Language, Thought and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe (La Salle, Ill., 1996).
14. Plato, Laches and Charmides, translated by Rosamond Kent Sprague (Indianapolis, 1992), p. 32 (191A-C).
15. Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley, 1978), 10.
16. On the notion of semblances of virtues, see Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas, p. 17ff.
17. Foot's (rather complex) view on this issue is that "courage is not operating as a virtue when the murderer turns his courage, which is a virtue, to bad ends" (Foot, Virtues and Vices, 16).
18. The two best published English-language summaries of the textual issues regarding the Analects are Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (Albany, 1990), 80-81, and 239-41, nn. 2-4
19. and Steven Van Zoeren, Poetry and Personality (Stanford, Calif., 1991), 17-28.
20. There is also an outstanding forthcoming textual study of the Analects by E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York, 1997). Citations of the Analects in this essay follow the sectioning in the Harvard-Yenching Institute concordance.
21. Alasdair MacIntyre, "Incommensurability,Truth, and the Conversation between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues," in Culture and Modernity, edited by Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu, 1991), 106.
22. Similar is this comment from the Zuo zhuan, Duke Ai, 16th year: "Adhering to benevolence is what I call being trustworthy, and practicing righteousness is what I call being courageous.... Just doing what one has sworn to do is not trustworthiness, and dying when the time comes is not courage" (translation modified from Burton Watson, The Tso Chuan [New York, 1989], 203).
23. Riegel suggests that Gongsun Chou, far from being a disciple, is actually criticizing Mencius in 2A2 and other passages ("Reflections on an Unmoved Mind," p. 450, n. 4). However, Zhao Qi identifies Gongsun Chou as one of Mencius's disciples in his commentary to 2A1, and Gongsun Chou identifies himself as Mencius's disciple in 2A1.7. Moreover, both the content of his questions ("I venture to ask wherein you excel, Master?") and the form (he allows Mencius to answer at great length) are inconsistent with hostile cross-examination.
24. Mencius was, at some point, some sort of minister in Qi (see 2B6). Riegel thinks that Mencius had already been prime minister by the time of this conversation, and that Gongsun Chou is needling Mencius about his failure to reform the ruler of Qi. He interprets ba wang bu yi yi as meaning that there was no difference between acting as a true king and acting as a hegemon during the time Mencius was in office ("Reflections on an Unmoved Mind," p. 436, and p. 451, n. 6).
25. (This is D. C. Lau's suggestion in "Some Notes on the Mencius," Asia Major, n.s., 15:1 [1969], 71.) (4) The final yan is an interrogative particle, making the sentence a rhetorical question. (Uchino reads this way.) (5) The zhui is transitive, giving the sense," ... I will not make him afraid."The problem with this last reading is that it is not clear what not making someone else afraid has to do with courage. (I am indebted to Scott Cook for making clear the need to address this issue.)
26. Su (read suo in modern Mandarin), which I have translated as "upright," is a rare character. Jeffrey Riegel, following one reading of an occurrence of su in the Shi jing (Mao 237), interprets it as "bound tight" ("Reflections on an Unmoved Mind," p. 438, and p. 452, n. 18).
27. This translation is modifed from Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (New York, 1989; o.p. 1938), 133.
28. I take it that Meng Shishe does not think one ought to "advance only after sizing up one's enemy, to ponder victory and only then join [battle]."To do so would make one's courage dependent upon being "certain of victory." In contrast with this, Meng Shishe does not care what the odds of victory are, he does not care whether he is certain of victory. Regardless of the situation, he is "without fear."
29. Paraphrasing Analects 15:21.
30. Duke Zhao, Year 25, summer. This and many other early references to qi are helpfully collected in the appendix to A. C. Graham, Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking (Singapore, 1986), 70-92.
31. Qi is also referred to later in 2A2 (verses 9 to 15), and in 6A8 and 7A36.
32. Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, Calif. 1969), 153.
33. and Shun, "Virtue, Mind and Morality," 41-57.
34. James D. Wallace, Virtues & Vices (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978), 71-72.
35. Yearley also makes this observation (Mencius and Aquinas, 156).
36. Emphasis mine. On King Hui's son, see 1A5.1.
37. Mencius 1A7.16.
38. I. A. Richards, Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (London, 1932), 28.