Mencius’ hermeneutics of classics

摘要

The Eastern Zhou (~)~] 722-222 B.C.) period was a golden age in Chinesernintellectual history, one in which the great masters emerged one after anotherrnand hundreds of schools competed with each other. Among them,rnthe Confucians had the deepest historical consciousness and were mostrnrespectful of traditional culture. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) himself talkedrnabout Yao J-~ and Shun ~, wrote about King Wen 3~ and King Wu ~f~, andrnregarded the absence of Duke Zhou ~ ~_~ in his dream as a signal of hisrngetting old; Mencius (371-289 B.C.?), it was reported, "cannot avoid mentioningrnYao and Shun whenever he talked" (Mendu~. 3A5) and, as pointedrnout by Zhao Qi j~@ (?.-A.D. 210) of the East Han Dynasty ~'~ (A.D.25-rn220), was "thorough with the five classics, and particularly good at the Bookrnof Odes ((~.)) and the Book ofnisto{y (({~)) " (Zhao: la). In the whole bookrnof Mendus, there are thirty-three uses of the Book of Odes, twenty-two ofrnwhich are of Da Ya (()~S~)) , and fourteen uses of the Book of History. Particularlyrnnoticeable is that, more often than not, Mencius' uses of these twornclassics were made in some particular context of his own discourses, whichrnshows to some extent how Confucian thinkers were using dassics. In additionrnto using classics to argue for his own points, Mencius also developedrntwo methods of interpreting classics, which have been very influential in thernConfucian hermeneutics of classics. This article aims to present the tworncontexts within which Mencius used classics, and to analyze the implicationsrnof Mencius' hermeneutics of classics.