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« Mencius on Torture | Main | Yu Dan in Britain »

May 02, 2009

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Duty may or may not be internal, but justice (yi) certainly is. Read the Zhouyi. Know why chivalrous swordsmen and swordswomen die for the protection of the weak, since the Spring and Autumn period; then we may realize that justice is indeed internal.

Of course, if you keep changing the established terms or English names for the four cardinal virtues until they are unrecognizable to most, and based on your new terms, some readers may even consider you a Buddhist!

Certainly the Mencian notion of "heart" represents internal, but rather than thinking of this in a internal/external duality, I interpret the Mencian view as being that man is an "anthropocosmos," that is, a microcosm, human nature is a corollary to universal nature. The heavenly mandate lives within man as the heart. I don't recall that in Mencius's description of the qualities of the heart he mentions duty. I see duty as one of the means of self-cultivation, that is, a method of working towards the central harmony, of being in harmony with the heavenly mandate. With the external practice of duty, we come closer to finding the lost heart. We cultivate the benevolence that is intrinsic to the heart. Filial duty is one of the things we do, not something we are. And when we do it, we manifest our goodness. And good is what we are.

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