Debate materials of Li Bai, Du Fu and Mencius

Overview of life

Li Bai (70 1-762), born in 70 1, Han nationality, 6' 6 ",born in Taibai, whose real name is Qinglian Jushi, a native of Jiangyou, Sichuan, was a great romantic poet in Tang Dynasty. His poetic style is bold and elegant, with rich imagination, fluent and natural language and harmonious temperament. He is good at absorbing nutrients from folk songs and myths, forming his unique magnificent and gorgeous colors, which is the new peak of active romantic poetry since Qu Yuan. He and Du Fu, a great romantic poet in Tang Dynasty, are also called "Da Du Li" and "Poet Fairy".

Li Bai's ancestral home is in Longxi (now Ji Cheng Township, Jingning County, Gansu Province) Ji Cheng. At the end of Sui Dynasty, he moved to Broken Leaf City in Central Asia (now near tokmak in northern Kyrgyzstan), where Li Bai was born. At the age of five, his family moved to Zhangming County, Mianzhou (now Jiangyou, Sichuan). At the age of twenty, he left Sichuan alone and began to wander widely, reaching Xiangjiang River in Dongting in the south and wuyue in the east, and living in Anlu (now Anlu City, Hubei Province). He traveled around, hoping to make friends and pay homage to celebrities, so as to get an introduction, climb high in one fell swoop and realize his political ideals and ambitions. However, after ten years of wandering, I have accomplished nothing. Continue to go north to Taiyuan and Chang 'an, east to Qi and Lu, and live in Rencheng, Shandong (now Jining, Shandong). At this time, he has made many celebrities and created a lot of excellent poems, which are famous all over the world. In the early years of Tianbao, on the recommendation of Taoist Wu Renyun, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty called him to Beijing and ordered him to worship the Hanlin. Soon, due to the remorse of the dignitaries, he was driven out of Beijing in Tianbao 34 (AD 744 or 745). Since then, he has been wandering in Jiang and Huai, and his thoughts are extremely boring.

In the winter of the 14th year of Tianbao (AD 755), An Lushan rebelled. At this time, he lived in seclusion in Lushan Mountain, which coincided with the great army of Wang Yong, and invited Li Bai down the mountain to enter the shogunate. Later, Li Lin rebelled against Su Zong and was eliminated. Li Bai was implicated and sentenced to exile in Yelang (now Guizhou Province). He was pardoned and released halfway from Xunyang (now Jiujiang, Jiangxi) to Xuancheng (now Xuancheng, Anhui). In the first year of Baoying (AD 762), Dai Zong died in dangtu county, Anhui.

Li Bai lived in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. He had the progressive ideal of "helping the poor" and "settling down in peace", and he struggled to realize this ideal all his life. A large number of his poems not only reflected the prosperity of that era, but also exposed and criticized the debauchery and corruption of the ruling group, showing the positive spirit of despising the powerful, resisting the traditional bondage and pursuing freedom and ideals. In art, his poems are novel in imagination, strong in emotion, magnificent in artistic conception and fresh and lively in language, forming a bold artistic style and reaching the peak of positive romantic poetry in ancient China. There are more than 900 poems, including Li Taibai's poems.

His poems are rich in imagination, unique in conception, magnificent and bold in style, and he is a representative figure of romantic poetry in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.

Li Bai's personality

He has never achieved fame in his life, but he has high expectations. He despised the rich and powerful, unscrupulously mocked the hierarchical order centered on political power, criticized the phenomenon of political corruption, and carried forward the heroism in the prosperous Tang culture with a bold gesture of resistance. Li Bai's anti-power thought is becoming more and more conscious and mature with the enrichment of his life practice. In the early days, it was mainly manifested in the equal requirements of "self-improvement, not being human" and "making friends with princes", as he said in his poem: "I was drunk in Chang 'an, and five kings and seven people shared a glass of wine. In the face of heroic spirit, the romantic spirit will fall behind others! " ("Liu Yelang gave the judge Xin") "Encourage the nine masters to make waves and be young and ignorant." ("Ode to the Jade Pot") He sometimes makes grandiose remarks that show contempt for powerful people, such as "Gold and white jade buy songs and laugh, and get drunk and tired, and despise princes" ("Remembering the past" sent the county yuan to join the army). But his main performance is inner pride. With the understanding of the actual situation of high-level power groups, he further exposed the opposition between Buyi and dignitaries: "Zhu Yu buys songs and laughs, wasting talents." (The fifteenth time of "Ancient Style") "The sparrow is in the phoenix nest, and it is holding the phoenix." ("Bo Gu" article 39. The ugly behavior of those who stole power because of flattering the emperor is even more ironic, such as: the cart flying dust, the pavilion is dark in the afternoon. China is more expensive than gold, and Lianyun has a room. He Huihe was dubbed cockfighting. When the rainbow is dried in one breath, pedestrians are afraid. There is no such thing as washing your ears, only Yao and your feet! In "Dream on Mount Tianmu", he made the loudest voice: Ah, how can I solemnly bow and scrape to those high officials who will never get a sincere face! The significance of this artistic generalization in Li Bai's poems is as important as Du Fu's famous sentence "The wine and meat in Zhumen stink, and the bones on the road freeze to death" ("Ode to 500 words from Beijing to Fengxian").

In the deteriorating political situation at the end of Tianbao, Li Bai linked anti-dignitary with extensive social criticism. For example, Answering the King on Twelve Cold Nights not only fought bravely for the fallen sages, but also expressed disappointment and contempt for the imperial court: If there is no Beihai in Li See, where can there be heroic spirit? If you don't look at Pei Shangshu, there are three feet of wormwood thorns in the earth grave. Teenagers have long wanted to go to the Five Lakes. Seeing this, I will spare Zhong Ding. Li Bai even sharply reprimanded Xuanzong himself in the way of satirizing modern people in his poems, such as "Feeling the Book, Being a Gentleman", "Ancient Style" and "Ascending to the Far Sea". In a word, it can be said that he developed the anti-power theme in Tang poetry to the point of dripping and hearty. Ren Hua said that Li Bai "lived for decades and never lost his color for a day" ("Miscellaneous Words Send Li Bai"). This consciousness of never giving in to powerful people and bravely fighting for self-dignity is an important content of attaching importance to personal value since Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it is also a tradition of attaching importance to strength and character. It is under the new historical conditions that Li Bai inherited and carried forward this excellent tradition and became a star in poetry.

Li Bai's poems and songs are full of passion for life. His poems are often full of childlike interest in the wild, such as: "Two people love each other, one cup after another." Drunk enough to sleep, I plan to hold the Ming dynasty piano. "("lovers in the mountains ")" Long sleeves, light desire, drunken dancing in Hanzhong. Put a robe on me. I'm drunk and sleep on my stomach. "Life is like strong liquor, which intoxicates the poet. Of course, this does not mean that there is no sorrow and pain in life, but the poet's optimism is enough for him to transcend and overcome his sense of hardship. The so-called "sentimental life? "And drink and climb the stairs" (the song of Liangyuan), "Drunk Jia Qianchi, don't look at the monument to tears" (the fourth song of Xiangyang), which is a portrayal of his broad-minded mentality.

He is never satisfied with loneliness and loneliness, such as I drink the bright moon alone: from a pot of wine to flowers, I drink alone. No one is with me. Raise my cup, I invite the bright moon, which brings me its shadow and makes us three people. The moon doesn't know how to drink, but the shadow in front of it is behind. I have to mingle with them and enjoy the happiness of spring. The song I sing is bright and wandering, and I dance the shadow before wandering. Wake up and be happy together, and disperse after drunkenness. I am willing to stay with them forever and forget the harm of friendship, just like the Milky Way. Only a energetic poet can come up with such a fantastic idea. He has a "short song line", and the idea is: "If you want to win the Six Dragons, go back to the car and hang the Fusang. With the help of the Big Dipper, every dragon advised them to drink a glass of wine, so they all fell asleep and couldn't stay awake. Wealth is not what you want, you are in your twilight years. " There is no old man's sigh here, but the naive imagination of "persuading wine" is used to express infinite attachment to life. These poems, with their pure taste, appeal to the beautiful humanity submerged by vulgar life, thus gaining permanent charm.

Li Bai has a strong feeling for nature, and he is good at integrating his personality into natural scenery, which makes his landscapes and valleys have idealized colors. He said in the poem "Sunrise": "I will include a big piece, and I will be noble and have the same topic." He also said: "Yangchun told me to smoke, and I took articles during the holidays." (From the preface of my brother's spring banquet in Taohuayuan) Li Bai is heroic and pursues a pure and noble state of mind. These different personality aspects also form two types of his artistic conception of mountains and rivers: one is to highlight the beauty of strength and movement in the majestic mountains and rivers, and express his lofty aspirations in the magnificent artistic conception; The other is interested in pursuing the beauty of Ming Che and expressing innocent feelings in a beautiful artistic conception. For example, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River in his works roared and roared: "How does the water of the Yellow River move out of the sky and into the ocean, and never return" ("Into the wine"); "The Yellow River Wan Li touches the mountains, and the vortex hub turns to Qin Mine ... djinn growls and breaks the two mountains, and Hongbo jet shoots the East China Sea ("Xiyue Yuntai Song Send Dan Qiu Zi "); "I climbed up. I look at the world and I can't go to the river. " The wind blows Huang Yun for hundreds of miles, and the snow peaks are white around the nine streams. "(Song of Lushan's suggestion and Lu Xuzhou) Poseidon has been to the evil wind, and the waves hit the stone walls of Tianmen. What happened to Zhejiang in August? Snow in Taosi Mountain (Hengjiang Ci). The peaks in his works are towering and steep: "The highest cliff is only one foot below the sky, and the dry pine trees hang their heads from the surface of the cliff" (Shu Dao Nan); On a straight line leading to heaven, its peak enters heaven, with five holy peaks on top, casting a shadow across China; The ladder mountain range stretches for hundreds of miles, starting from here and extending to the southeast "(Tianmu Mountain rises in my dream). He endowed mountains and rivers with lofty aesthetic feeling with heroism in his chest. His praise for the great power of nature is also a tribute to the far-sighted and unremitting pursuit of life ideals. Extraordinary natural image and proud heroic character are integrated.

At the same time, Li Bai also wrote many beautiful landscape poems. For example, "people travel around the moon and ships travel in the air" ("Send Weiwan, a man from Wuwangshan, back to the palace"); "When a man rides on the sea and the moon, the sail falls into the sky in the lake" ("Looking for Yang to send his brother to visit Sima Zuo in Poyang"); "The moon turns with the green hills, and the green hills follow the flowing water. It seems that I am above the Milky Way, but I feel that the clouds are secluded ("On the Moonlight, I will send a trip outside the Cuiyuan"); "Jinling night is quiet and cool, watching the five mountains in the west wing alone. The white clouds reflect the water and shake the empty city, and the white dew drops the beads and the autumn moon ("The Moon on the West Tower of Jinling City"). These poems are famous for their clarity and purity. Li Bai's landscape poems are not so much a realistic description of natural features as a reformed and idealized picture according to the poet's personality. He just wants to grasp the overall momentum or atmosphere, splash ink on the basis of sudden excitement, while ignoring the specific details, and even the visual transfer order of the scenery is often not concerned. Li Bai's landscape poems are pervasive and lyrical. He is good at blending mountains and rivers with specific emotions, and there is a subtle relationship between the situation of "scenery" and the characteristics of "emotion" For example, seeing a friend off: to the north of the Great Wall is a blue mountain range, and to the east is a white waterline. Here we say goodbye to each other, and you, like losing your father, are floating in the wind and traveling far away. Floating clouds are like wanderers, like wandering, and the sunset slowly goes down the mountain, which seems to be nostalgic. With a wave of his hand, he will be separated from now on, and his friend on horseback will carry him on a long journey, blowing a long wind, as if reluctant to leave. The "floating clouds" and "sunset" in the poem are not only the foreground of the eyes, but also the concrete images with specific emotional content in ancient poetry, which means that once a wanderer leaves, he will be like a floating cloud, so he will say goodbye to the sunset without leaving a scar. Another example is "the clouds return to the blue sea and the evening, and the geese have no blue sky." The first two sentences not only point out the season and time, but also use the images of "cloud" and "goose" to refer to departure and travel. In addition, such as "sometimes white clouds rise and the sky unfolds." However, in my heart, I am grateful for every happiness ("Looking at Nanshan to send a song to a hermit"), "Oh, go and ask this river flowing eastward, whether it can go further than the love of friends!" ("Parting Nanjing Restaurant"), "Xi Hui drives by the water, blue waves are rippling" ("Swimming in Nanyang Qingling Spring") and so on.

Li Bai's thoughts and sentiments of freedom and liberation and his personality with the tendency of popularization also enabled him to explore all kinds of human beauty in social life more deeply. There is a yearning for a quiet life here, such as the third part of Midnight Wu Ge: a new moon hangs over the capital, and ten thousand laundry hammers are beating. The autumn wind blew Yi Dao's voice, and every household remembered the people guarding the border. When will the border war be settled and when will my husband end his expedition? There are praises for working life, such as "Song of Autumn Pu" XIV: "Fire shines on the heavens and the earth, and red stars are everywhere. Langlang moonlit night, winding cold Sichuan. " All these poems, without exception, use the ideal light wheel to make the theme of daily life glow with poetic style.

Brief introduction of du fu

Du Fu (A.D. 7 12-770), Han nationality, with beautiful words, was named Shaoling Yelao, Du Shaoling and Du Gongbu. A native of Gongxian County, Henan Province (now Gongxian County, Henan Province), Du Zhisun is a famous poet. China, the greatest realistic poet in Tang Dynasty, was called "Da Du Li" and "Poet Saint" together with Li Bai. He wrote 1400 poems in his life. Originally from Xiangyang, Hubei, he was born in Gongxian (now gongyi city), Henan. The distant ancestor was Du Yu, a famous poet in the early Tang Dynasty, and his father was Du Xian. Tang Suzong, Official Left Addendum. After he entered Shu, he was recommended by his friends as a staff officer of Ren Jiannan Drug Rehabilitation Center, and Yuan Wailang was appointed as the school's engineering department. Therefore, later generations also called him Du Shiyi and Du Gongbu.

Du Fu (712-770) studied and traveled before the age of 35. During the Tianbao period, he went to Chang 'an and had no way to join the army. After ten years of hardships, he won a small position in which you Wei led Cao to join the army. At the beginning of An Shi Rebellion, he was exiled and captured by the rebels. After getting out of danger, the official got a left pickup truck. In the second year of Gan Yuan (759), he abandoned his official position and went west. Finally he went to Sichuan and settled in Chengdu. He once played Yuan Wailang in Jiannan Our Time Yanwu, so he was also named Du Gongbu. In his later years, his family moved eastward, staying in Kuizhou for two years and leaving the gorge. Wandering in Hubei and Hunan, he died of poverty and illness.

Zi Mei lived in the historical period from prosperity to decline in the Tang Dynasty. Her poems are mostly about social unrest, political darkness and people's sufferings, which is called "the history of poetry". He cares about the country and the people, has a noble personality and exquisite poetic skills, and is known as the "poet saint".

Du Fu is good at using many systems of classical poetry and creatively developing them. He is the pioneer of the new Yuefu poetry style. His Yuefu poems contributed to the development of the new Yuefu movement in the middle Tang Dynasty. His "May 7th" ancient novel, which is also a history of poetry, begins to narrate and focus on the whole story, marking the high achievement of China's poetry art. Du Fu also showed extraordinary creativity in the May 7th law, and accumulated complete artistic experience in the aspects of temperament, antithesis and refining words and sentences, which made this genre reach a fully mature stage. Du Gongbu has been handed down from generation to generation.

The core of Du Fu's thought is the Confucian thought of benevolent government. He has a great ambition of "making the monarch Yao and Shun superior first, and then making the customs pure". He loves life, people and the great rivers and mountains of the motherland. He hated evil, criticized and exposed the corruption of the imperial court and the dark phenomenon in social life. He sympathized with the people and even fantasized that he was willing to make self-sacrifice to save their suffering. Therefore, his poetry creation always runs through the main line of worrying about the country and the people, which shows Du Fu's greatness. His poems are rich in social content, rich in the color of the times and distinctive in political inclination, which truly and profoundly reflect the political current affairs and broad social life prospect of a historical era before and after the An Shi Rebellion, and are called the "history of poetry" of a generation. The style of Du Fu's poems is basically "gloomy and frustrated", and the language and text structure are full of changes, emphasizing the refinement of words and sentences. At the same time, his poems have many styles. Besides the five ancient poems, the seven ancient poems, the five laws and the seven laws, he also wrote many lines. There are also various artistic techniques, which are the epitome of the ideological art of Tang poetry. Du Fu also inherited the spirit of Yuefu in Han and Wei Dynasties, got rid of the shackles of the ancient Yuefu themes and created many new Yuefu themes, such as the famous Three Officials and Three Farewells. After his death, he was highly praised by Huang Fan, Han Yu, Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi. Du Fu's poems had a far-reaching influence on Bai Yuan's literary thought of "New Yuefu Movement" and Li Shangyin's near-body allegorical current affairs poems. However, Du Fu's poems were widely valued after the Song Dynasty. Yu Wang, Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Lu You and others highly praised Du Fu, while Wen Tianxiang regarded Du Fu's poems as a spiritual force to adhere to national integrity. The influence of Du Fu's poems, from ancient times to the present, has long gone beyond the scope of literature and art. For details of his life, see Old Tang Book 190. This is Du Gongbu.

Three Officials and Three Farewells are the representative works of Du Fu's realistic poems. It truly describes the thoughts, feelings, actions and language of county officials, customs officials, old women, old people, brides, husbands and others in a specific environment, vividly reflects the social reality of that period and the profound disasters and pains of working people, and shows people tragic life tragedies. In these descriptions of life sufferings, on the one hand, the poet has deep sympathy for the people who have suffered greatly, and hates the enslavement and persecution of the people by officials; On the other hand, he supported the counter-insurgency war of the dynasty and hoped that the people would suffer hardships and cooperate with the dynasty to put down the rebellion. This complex and contradictory thought accords with the poet's thought of worrying about the country and the people.

Introduction of Mencius

Mencius (372 BC-289 BC) (born in the fourth year of the reign of King Zhou and died in the twenty-sixth year), Han nationality, was born in Zoucheng, Shandong. The name Yu Zi. Also known as car separation and separation. Father's name is excited and mother's name is lost. China was a great thinker in ancient times. The representative figure of Confucianism in the Warring States period. People from Zoucheng, Shandong. He is the author of Mencius, which belongs to a collection of recorded prose.

Mencius studied under Zi Si (a student who studied under Zi Si), inherited and carried forward Confucius' thoughts, and became a master of Confucianism after Confucius, known as "the sage of Asia" and also called "Confucius and Mencius" with Confucius. Mencius once imitated Confucius and led his disciples to lobby countries. However, it was not accepted by all countries at that time, and he retired to write with his disciples. There are seven pieces of Mencius handed down from ancient times, the titles of which are: Liang Shang Xia; "Gongsun Ugly" up and down; "Teng Wengong" up and down; Li Lou; "Zhang Wan" up and down; "High posture" ups and downs; Up and down "dedication". His theoretical starting point is the theory of good nature, which puts forward "benevolent governance" and "kingly governance" and advocates rule by virtue. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu called Mencius, The Analects of Confucius, Daxue and The Doctrine of the Mean the Four Books. From then until the end of Qing Dynasty, "Four Books" had been a compulsory part of the imperial examination. Mencius' article is eloquent, magnificent and good at argumentation.

Mencius' distant ancestor was Shi, an aristocrat of Lu, who moved from Lu to Zou. It is said that Mencius lost his father at the age of three, and Meng Mu worked hard to raise him. Meng Mu is very strict, and his stories of "Meng Mu's Three Movements" and "Breaking the Machine to Teach Children" have become eternal stories, which are models of maternal education in later generations.

Mencius thought

People-oriented thought

"The people are precious, the country is second, and the monarch is light." It means the people first, the country second, and the monarch last. Mencius believed that the monarch should take care of the people first, and politicians should protect the rights of the people. Mencius agreed that the monarch has no way and the people have the right to overthrow the regime. For this reason, Hanshu and Yiwenzhi only regard Mencius as a sub-book, without giving it its due status. In the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms of Houshu, Meng Changjun, the master of Houshu, ordered people to carve stones in eleven classics such as Mencius, which may be the beginning of Mencius' being included in the classics. By the time of filial piety in the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu called Mencius, the Analects of Confucius, the University and the Doctrine of the Mean as the "Four Books" and became one of the "Thirteen Classics", and Mencius' position was pushed to the peak. Legend has it that Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, was dissatisfied with Mencius' people-oriented thought and ordered people to abridge the relevant contents in Mencius.

Benevolent policy theory

Mencius inherited and developed Confucius' thought of ruling by virtue, and developed it into the theory of benevolent governance, which became the core of his political thought. He applied the principles of "pro" and "long" to politics, eased class contradictions and safeguarded the long-term interests of the feudal ruling class.

On the one hand, Mencius strictly distinguished the class status of the ruler and the ruled, and thought that "those who do things rule their people, and those who do things rule their people", and imitated the Zhou system to draw up a hierarchy from emperor to ruler; On the other hand, the relationship between the ruler and the ruled is compared to the relationship between parents and children, and it is advocated that the ruler should care about the sufferings of the people like parents, and the people should be close to and serve the ruler like parents.

Mencius believes that this is the most ideal politics, and the rulers can win the heartfelt support of the people if they implement benevolent policies; On the other hand, if people's lives are ignored, they will lose people's hearts, become solitary thieves and be overthrown by the people. The specific content of benevolent government is very extensive, including economy, politics, education and ways to unify the world, among which there is a clue of people-oriented thought. This thought developed from the idea of valuing the people over the gods in the Spring and Autumn Period.

Based on the experience of the Warring States period, Mencius summed up the laws governing the rise and fall of chaos in various countries and put forward a famous proposition rich in the essence of democracy: "The people are the most important, the country is the second, and the monarch is the light." People think that how to treat people is extremely important to the rise and fall of a country. Mencius attached great importance to the opposition between people's hearts, and repeatedly expounded through a large number of historical examples that this is a key issue related to winning or losing in the world. Mencius said: "Benevolence must go through first". The so-called "well boundary" means dividing and sorting out the field boundary and implementing the well field system. The well-field system conceived by Mencius is a feudal natural economy, which is based on small farmers of one household and takes the form of exploiting labor force for rent. Every farmer has a five-acre house and a hundred-acre field and is self-sufficient. Mencius believes that "people are the way, those who have constant production have perseverance, and those who have no constant production have no perseverance." Only when people have "permanent property" and settle down on the land can they not violate the criminal law and do evil. Mencius believes that when people's material life is guaranteed, rulers can re-establish schools, educate them on the principle of filial piety and guide them to be kind, which can create a good moral trend of "kissing" and "growing up", that is, "everyone kisses and grows up, and the world is peaceful." Mencius believed that the benevolent government of the ruler could win the heartfelt support of the people all over the world, thus being invincible. Mencius' benevolent policy should be based on the ruler's "unbearable heart". Mencius said: "The former king had an unbearable heart and Sri Lanka had an unbearable policy." "Unable to bear the heart of others" is a kind of pity and kindness. But this kind of sympathy and kindness is different from Mozi's "universal love", but comes from the feelings of blood. Mencius advocated that "Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss is the political embodiment of this unbearable heart.

Mencius closely combined ethics with politics, emphasizing that moral cultivation is the basis of doing politics well. He said: "The foundation of the world is in the country, the foundation of the country is at home, and the foundation of the home is in the body." Later, the idea of "nourishing qi and calming the world" put forward by University was developed according to this idea of Mencius.

Moral ethics

Mencius summarized moral norms into four categories, namely, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom. At the same time, the human relations are summarized into five kinds, namely, "father and son are close, monarch and minister are righteous, husband and wife are different, old and young are orderly, and friends are trustworthy". Mencius believed that benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom were the most important. Benevolence is based on filial piety and filial piety, and it is the basic moral standard to deal with the blood relationship between father and son. He believes that if every member of society uses benevolence and righteousness to deal with all kinds of interpersonal relationships, the stability of feudal order and the unity of the world will be reliably guaranteed.

In order to explain the origin of these moral norms, Mencius put forward the idea of good nature. He believes that although there are differences in division of labor and class among members of society, their human nature is the same. He said, "So, people of the same kind are all similar, so why doubt others?" A saint is like me. Here, Mencius put the ruler and the ruled in an equal position and discussed their universal humanity. This discussion adapted to the historical trend of slave liberation and social change at that time, marked the deepening of human understanding and greatly promoted the development of ethical thought.