"Benevolence" and "Love" in Confucius and Mencius' Thought —— Based on the perspective of human nature Abstract: Confucius and Mencius' thought of benevolence provides many positive guidance for people to strengthen moral cultivation, deal with interpersonal relationships and even social development. We should not only love ourselves, but also learn to love others and nature. These ideas are always worth learning and practicing in the process of building a harmonious society. Keywords: Confucius and Mencius thought; Love; Ren; China Library humanity classification number: B222 document identification number: A document number:1673-2596 (2015) 09-0086-02-In the early days of slave society, slaves had no right to personal freedom and their living conditions were very miserable. Slave owners can not only buy and sell slaves at will, punish them at will, but even kill them at will. In the late slave society and even in the Spring and Autumn Period, although this situation improved slightly, slave owners could no longer slaughter slaves casually, but incidents that hurt the people at the bottom of society due to the rulers' indifference to life still occurred from time to time. Accordingly, the "benevolence" thought put forward by Confucianism is a criticism of this social phenomenon. In Shuo Wen Jie Zi, Xu Shen interprets "benevolence" as "benevolence, kinship and obedience to others." [1] As can be seen from the interpretation of ancient Chinese, "benevolence" means the friendly relationship between people. Confucius' respect for life, affirmation and care for people are all embodied in the word "benevolence". Confucius said "benevolence", first of all, is a topic related to people. "The benevolent is also good, and the relatives are also big." Benevolence is love, and the essence of benevolence is love. Therefore, when Fan Chi asked Confucius what "benevolence" was, Confucius replied briefly and forcefully: "love". On the one hand, Confucius' "love" is filial love based on blood relationship, and it is a spontaneous love without any utilitarian purpose. On the other hand, although Confucius also said "universal love", this "love" is still a kind of poor love. Love your loved ones first, and then push this love to the public. Secondly, Confucius' "benevolence" is also a respect for personality. Confucius said that "the three armed forces can win the handsome, but ordinary men can't win the ambition", which is an affirmation of the inviolability of human ambition and ambition. "Don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you" is also a respect for everyone and is regarded as the "golden rule" in dealing with interpersonal relationships in contemporary times. Applying the idea of "benevolence" to politics embodies Confucius' thought of loving the people, that is, "ruling the country by virtue" and "nurturing the people and benefiting the people" Confucius said, "cultivate one's morality to protect the people", and he said, "Why kill people when you are a politician?" Children should be good and people should be good. These people-oriented thoughts with "benevolence" as the core lie in pushing oneself and others to "love", which can be regarded as an extension of "benevolence" and interpret pure humanism. "With keen observation and thinking ability, Confucius grasped the thought of love contained in the word benevolence at that time, and clarified, enriched and perfected it, making it a philosophical thought of benevolence with broad significance." [2] Confucius believes that human nature is "benevolence". When answering disciples' questions, Confucius gave three meanings of "benevolence": the first meaning refers to morality and moral people. Fan Chi asked, "Why do you want to be human?" Confucius said, "Benevolent people suffer first, and then speak benevolence." [3] It means that good people should rush to do difficult things and fall behind others in accepting rewards. If they can do this, they will be merciful. It can be seen from this sentence that the first "benevolence" refers to a moral person, and the second "benevolence" refers to morality. The second meaning refers to a gentleman with noble sentiments. For example, "The Analects of Confucius Zi Han" said: "The benevolent does not worry." The third layer means truth. For example, "do your duty as a teacher by example" means that even your own teacher can't give in or give in when facing the truth. Although there are many meanings of benevolence, they are all related to "love" to varying degrees, and can also be said to be connected with human nature. Confucius saw people's sociality and liberated people from Machamp's view of destiny, which was extremely progressive in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Then, after understanding "why is benevolence", what can be done to achieve it? Confucius said, "Self-denial is benevolence." Benevolence is an internal moral thought, while propriety is an external patriarchal system. Rites are based on benevolence, and how benevolence in rituals is the limit and norm of benevolence. "Self-denial" means "complex ceremony", and "self-denial complex ceremony" means benevolence. Everyone should limit his behavior to conform to social norms and get social recognition. Self-denial is to unify the individual's free will with the patriarchal clan system, and internalize the collective will of the patriarchal clan system into the principle of "being benevolent for everyone", that is, "being benevolent for yourself". In this way, the individual behavior with "benevolence" as the ultimate goal is, on the surface, the embodiment of individual free will, the individual's efforts to achieve "benevolence" and, in fact, the will of social groups. As the founder of pre-Qin Confucianism, Confucius saw the importance of respecting people and life, and his "benevolence" thought was fully reflected in his general plan of governing the country. Based on the idea of "people-oriented", Confucius' "benevolent governance" is mainly manifested in his political philosophy with morality as the core, including the following points: First, he advocates governing the country with morality and strongly opposes tyranny, and tyranny should be replaced by "moral governance". The concrete measures of moral policy are "respecting five beauties" and "eliminating four evils". If the monarch can do this, he can reduce the "tyranny" of abusing criminal law and killing innocent people indiscriminately, and get the support of the people, he can achieve an ideal political state, which is the embodiment of Confucius' political philosophy. Second, we should benefit the people, enrich the people and teach the people. The first is to "benefit the people" so that the people can get benefits and benefits; Then gradually realize "enriching the people" and let the people get rich, so that social politics can be stable and the status of the monarch can be stable. If the people are poor and the intensification of social contradictions will cause people's resistance, then the status of the monarch will be difficult to stabilize; Finally, "teaching the people" and "being rich without teaching is close to an animal", because material life is often not rich enough, and people's spiritual world is particularly important [4]. Therefore, it is necessary to educate the people on morality and ethics, so that people can act according to moral norms, and society can be stable. These strategies and measures for governing the country all embody Confucius' thought of "ruling by virtue", and attach importance to moral cultivation and moral education, which is the characteristic of Confucius' thought of "benevolent governance". In slave society, slaves can be slaughtered and bought and sold at will by slave owners, and slaves have no basic rights as human beings. Later, with the transformation from slave society to feudal society, primitive humanism appeared, and society gradually began to call for respect for people. In this social background, Mencius put forward the viewpoint of the theory of good nature, and on this basis, he constructed his thought of benevolent governance. The issue of human nature is one of the hot topics that hundred schools of thought paid close attention to in pre-Qin period. Mencius inherited Confucius' thought of "benevolence", initially established a relatively perfect theory of human nature, and expressed respect and care for people. First of all, Mencius' thought of "love" is based on his theory of "goodness of nature". He said, "compassion is also benevolence", "the end of benevolence" and "everyone has it" Compassion is innate. Goodness and love in human nature are innate and are not influenced by external and utilitarian factors. Therefore, this is the natural expression of human nature. Therefore, the goodness of human nature is like water, and it tends to be good. Respect and care for life are based on good nature. Mencius defined "benevolence" with the "four hearts" of compassion, shame and evil, resignation and right and wrong, which is also called "four ends", that is, the beginning of goodness, like human limbs, is owned by all. Contrary to the four ends, there are four moral behaviors: benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom. The appearance of every kind of moral behavior is the external embodiment of the goodness of human nature. If you can do this, you can become a good person. Secondly, Mencius' thought of "love" is the expansion and development of Confucius. Confucius said "love" is to love the person you love and the person who has something to do with you, and then push this love to the public; Mencius's "love" directly requires people to expand their love for themselves and their loved ones into love for others and their loved ones, and then love everyone, that is, "old and old, less and less, less and less." It can be seen that Mencius' respect and care for people is not limited to blood relatives, but his love for everyone in the world. Thirdly, Mencius also highly affirmed and attached importance to the individual's independent personality. For example, in dealing with the relationship between the monarch and the minister, Mencius strongly opposed and despised those who unconditionally obeyed the monarch, and ridiculed that "those who take obedience as the right path are also concubines", "instead, they advocated' success and happiness; Go your own way when you are frustrated. Wealth can't be lewd, poverty can't be moved, and power can't be bent. "[5]. Such a gentleman deserves our study and respect. Finally, Mencius fully affirmed the inviolability of people's right to life and once again showed his love for life. Both the ruling class and the common people have equal right to life. No matter how high or low, anyone's life should be protected and respected. In Mencius' view, the monarch mainly wants to win the world, not at the expense of people's lives. The people are more important than the monarch and the world. Source: Journal of Chifeng University Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition