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Mencius

Bryan Van Norden · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2024

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Type: Web page
Author: Bryan Van Norden
Accessed: 2026-09-01

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EstablishedMencius urged rulers to govern through benevolence and moral suasion rather than force, and in Mengzi 3A3 proposed a 'well-field' system in which eight families farm their own plots and jointly cultivate a central field whose produce is the tax.DisputedScholars disagree about how far Mencius treats the will of the people as a source of political authority: some read him as a resource for democracy, others caution that he endorses accountable but non-democratic rule.EstablishedMencius lived in the fourth century BCE; his traditional lifetime is given as 372–289 BCE, dates that are approximate.