I’ve been reading the ancient Chinese sage, Mencius, in a 1998 translation by David Hinton. I like Mencius because he begins with the axiom that human nature is essentially good; which fits into my Universalist theology. Somehow, as I was reading this morning, this passage struck me:<\/p>\n
Emperor Hsuan of Ch’i asked [Mencius] about ministers [i.e., ministers in government service], and Mencius asked, “What kind of minister are you asking about?”<\/p>\n
“Is there more than one kind?” asked the emperor.<\/p>\n
“Yes,” replied Mencius. “There are ministers from royal families and there are ministers from common families.”<\/p>\n
“May I ask about ministers from royal families?”<\/p>\n
“If the sovereign is making grave mistakes, they admonish him. If they have to admonish him over and over, and he still refuses to listen — they replace him.”<\/p>\n
The emperor blanched at this, so Mencius continued:<\/p>\n
“Why so surprised? You asked, and I wouldn’t dare be less than honest and forthright with you.”<\/p>\n
After he’d recovered his color, the emperor asked about ministers from common families, and Mencius said: “If the sovereign is making mistakes, they admonish him. If they have to admonish him over and over, and he still refueses to listen — they resign and leave his country behind.” [Wan Chang, Book Two, section 9; pp. 193-194]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s an interesting distinction that Mencius makes. It makes you ask yourself: which kind of the two types would I be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been reading the ancient Chinese sage, Mencius, in a 1998 translation by David Hinton. I like Mencius because he begins with the axiom that human nature is essentially good; which fits into my Universalist theology. Somehow, as I was reading this morning, this passage struck me: Emperor Hsuan of Ch’i asked [Mencius] about ministers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[343],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","tag-mencius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}