Talk:Mencius

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	WikiProject Korea invites you to join in improving Wikipedia articles related to Korea. Community: Discussion - Notice board Guidelines: Manual of Style - Naming conventions Navigation: Key topics - Browse - Portal
Korea-related tasks: edit refresh Collaboration of the month Create articles Cleanup articles Assess articles Add Korean text Maintain unstable articles Discuss articles for deletion Improve A-class articles Improve B-class articles Improve Start-class articles Improve D-class articles Improve Stub-class articles Improve top priority articles Improve high priority articles Improve medium priority articles Improve low priority articles Improve very low priority articles Articles to work on: Goguryeo, achieve consensus and neutral point of view. 2007-03-16 Tteok, expand. 2007-03-16 Jeongol (전골), create. 2007-03-16 Science and technology in Korea, create. 2007-03-17 Comfort women, achieve stability. 2007-3-29 Revised Romanization of Korean, include reasonably complete rule set. 2007-03-29

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)

	Philosophy Portal This article is within the scope of the Philosophy WikiProject, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy and the history of ideas. Please read the instructions and standards for writing and maintaining philosophy articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

	This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale. (add comments)
More information about this article... Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Table

I added table with all the names. For the debate that led to translations "ancestral name" and "clan name", see Talk:Confucius. Sources for the Mencius table are: [1], [2], and [3], among others. Hardouin 18:54, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Portrait's eyes pointing outwards

Wikipedia standards (I don't recall which particular one) say that pictures with people should have the person looking towards the main text. The picture of Mencius is looking away from the text. --Amazon10x 23:04, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

If there were another standard that require the infobox to be on the right, then you can only conform to one or the other standard. I don't think using the mirror image of a portrait is a good idea at all. Kowloonese 23:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rousseau

I don't know anything about Mencius, but when I read this article I immediately thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Neither article makes any mention of the other, but I wonder if they should. I would be fascinated to hear of the similarities and differences between the ideas of Mencius and Rousseau. Can anyone who knows more about Mencius help to draw a comparison? 86.136.90.90 23:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

→ Your observations about the similarities between Mencius and Rousseau are reasonably correct, especially in light of Rousseau's Émile. While a comparison might be helpful, it could generate a larger line of comparison among all progressive pedagogs (including Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, Montessori, A.S. Neill and others). For this reason, the biographical article for Mencius is perhaps not the correct place for such a comparison. burdenko 18:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You are very wrong about this, I don't know how you could possibly think they are similar. What common values did you have in mind?128.240.229.6 08:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have not studied Rousseau - are there similarities deeper than the fact that both thought human nature was good? On a related note, I apologize for having started the comparisons section and not having yet elaborated on Mencius' rivalries with his contemporaries. The article is not long so there shouldn't be a problem with comparing Mencius to Western philosophers as well, provided there are proper sources. Any more general points may be put in Chinese philosophy#Comparison between Chinese and Western philosophy. Pomte 22:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Mencius did not think human nature was good. He thought people were given the ability to distinguish between right and wrong from heaven (used in a political sense) through a sense of innate morality which they *should* use to guide their actions. He stressed the importance of shame in self-improvement. Therefore it is ridiculous to say he thought human nature was good. It is also disputed as to what system Rousseau really had in mind, as his thought contains both liberal and totalitarian elements.