The Mandate, and the Right to Rebel

Mencius drew from his view of human nature a bold political ethic. Since the moral sense is universal, government exists for the people's welfare, and its legitimacy is conditional on serving them: a ruler who practises "benevolent government" (ren zheng), securing the people's livelihood and moral education, holds the Mandate of Heaven (tianming), while a ruler who oppresses them forfeits it. Mencius pressed this to its startling conclusion, that a tyrant who has lost the Mandate has ceased to be a true king and become a mere "fellow," so that removing him is not regicide but the just deposing of a criminal.

"The people are the most important element," he taught; "the ruler is the least." This gave the Confucian tradition a principled, if carefully bounded, justification for resistance to tyranny. Mencius's stature grew over the centuries until, in the Song dynasty, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi placed the Mencius among the Four Books at the heart of the classical curriculum, where it shaped the education of every Chinese official for six hundred years.