Abstract

To extract some psychological lessons from the ancient Chinese classics, the author reviewed the works of Mencius, one of the Great Four Books of ancient China, and classified Mencius' main idea into three categories : theories of human nature, of education, and of moral practice. Among these three theories, this paper dealt with Mencius' theory of human nature and its psychological implications. According to Mencius, human being is different from any other animals in that he has 'mind' whose main function is reflection. Through reflection one can aware of one's inborn nature and discriminate what have to do and what have not to do as a human being. In this 'mind', there are inborn beginnings of four virtues which are essential motifs and goals in human life : the beginnings of benevolence(the feeling of commiseration), of righteousness(the feeling of shame and dislike), of propriety(the feeling of modesty and complaisance), and of wisdom(the feeling of approving and disapproving). Thus, he thought that man's inborn nature is good and one can be a sage only if he can preserve and cultivate these beginnings of four virtues. In this vein, he proposed two methods to preserve and cultivate them, which could be derived directly from mind's capacity to reflect : one is self-awareness of his inborn good nature and the other is to practice them in relation with others in everyday life. This is the core of Mencius' theory of hum an nature. From it, we can understand his view of human being. He viewed man as an active and autonomous being to be able to reflect one's nature, a possible being to be able to actualize one's self and a social being lying and living in relation with others. In this context, we can point out some shortcomings of modern psychology ; its radical mechanical reductionism, excessive determinism and individualism. These shortcomings come from mainly its indifference to the human mind (its indifference to the discrepancies between man and animals) and its heavy reliance on natural science. Thus if we admit the Mencius' view of man and the psychology which he may propose from this view, it can be suggested that psychology should transform its subjects and methods of study to be a real human and social science. On this ground, we can extract from Mencius some alternative subjects to study in psychology as a human and social science. They are the study of the self (its dimensions and the relations between them), the study of the activating forces of human actions (their dimensions and the relations with those of self), the study of the ideal state of human being (the steps and methods to reach it) and the study of the human relations (the perspectives to interprete and to understand human social activities).