The Foundation of Morality-- A Comparison Between Mencius and Aristotle

Abstract

Mencius and Aristotle raised up two totally different ethical theory systems around the same era(B.C 384-B.C 289), among which Mencius’ is based on the idea of human’s original goodness and Aristotle’s is from human nature’s randomness. Besides that, we can see rich diversity of the procedures on how morality gets cultivated and completed from the two philosophers’ respective views. This essay takes Mencius' ethics as "inside" and Aristotle's ethics as "outside", and compares and summarizes these different characteristics. Moreover, we try to find a metaphysical explanation for the speciality of each one according to their own theories and other philosophers’ works.