September 21

Mengzi (Master Meng) is one of the greatest early Confucian thinkers, famous both for advocating that the people’s well-being is the most important political goal, and for his argument that our individual natures have a built-in tendency toward goodness. In this class we will explore the way that Mengzi sought to teach his theoretical ideas through engagement with political leaders of his day. This is kind of philosophical practice lies in between (and connects up) the micro-level of analysis (about individual selves) and the macro-level of analysis (about the cosmos and reality itself); we will refer to this in-between practice as “meso-level philosophy.”