Mencius

Book V, Part A offers a discussion of key human relationships, their significance, and the rules surrounding them. It begins with someone asking Mencius why a man who was to become Emperor, Shun, was said to have been found crying in the fields. Mencius uses his answer to demonstrate a point about both the importance of the relation to one’s parents and what it means to be a properly dutiful child. He says that Shun remained anxious and unhappy despite receiving beautiful women, wealth, rank, and even “the whole Empire” (100). Mencius is suggesting that the happiness of one’s parents, for a dutiful son, takes priority over all other ostensible goods. So long as Shun’s parents remained estranged from him he was sorrowful. Love for one’s parents is also more constant. Mencius describes how at different periods of our lives, and depending on what we have achieved, we may variously long for a wife, public office, and a prince to serve. However, the desire to make one’s parents happy persists throughout our lives—or at least it does if, like Shun, one is a virtuous and benevolent person.

Mencius goes on to discuss another obligation to our parents. We must tell them if we want to get married, and we must seek their approval.