This book aims to show that the Mencius does not offer an account of human nature. James Behuniak, Jr., argues that the term renxing should instead be understood as a “disposition” that emerges from social, cultural, and historical factors, not from natural moral tendencies. He develops this claim, initially advanced by Roger T. Ames, by arguing that Warring States thought is “process oriented,” making it unlikely that Mencius thought there was a “shared, generic ‘nature’ that can be considered in abstraction from the process and location of its growth” (p. xvi). Behuniak maintains that the widespread misunderstanding of Mencius's view is due to the failure to consider the implications of process-oriented thought. For example, he says that Mencius only “forecasts the direction of human development in the form of the ‘four sprouts’” and does not “establish fixed ends antecedent to the process of development” (p. 86). Behuniak also claims that...

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