Mencius & Nietzsche

[statiktech]

I was recently looking back at one of my favorite ancient (around 280 BC) Confucian thinkers, Mencius. As I looked through some quotes and notes, I noticed some interesting tidbits.

There’s only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make. We each contain precious and worthless, great and small. Never injure the great for the sake of the small, or the precious for the sake of the worthless. Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them.

Great people nurturing what is best and most noble in them. The meak only nurturing their meakness. Cautioning against petty resentments being allowed to hinder the greater, noble character and pursuits (indeed, even values) of man.

Integrity, wisdom, skill, intelligence – such things are forged in adversity.

So it is that whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and confound his every endeavor. In this way his patience and endurance are developed, and his weaknesses are overcome. We change and grow only when we make mistakes. We realize what to do only when we work through worry and confusion. And we gain people’s trust and understanding only when our inner thoughts are revealed clearly in our faces and words.

Weakness, descent, overcoming, enduring and embodying our philosophy. Great hardship leading to greatness of character, and great resolve. Overcoming external hardship to clear the mind - almost like a great “down going”.

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.

A love and vigor for life born of wisdom and adversity. Perhaps even an appreciation. This, to me, is similar to the idea that a philosopher who truly embodied his beliefs would be something more akin to a dancer or an artist on the camvas of life.

I’m reading and taking this in, and it suddenly hits me. This seems an awful lot like some of the sentiments shared by our favorite mustachioed philosophical renegade several thousand years later. Even after two decades of reading philosophy, I am still amazed by the breadth and nuance of Nietzsche’s knowledge. The more I learn about history, philosphy (even the philosophers themselves), science, psychology, language, etc. the better I understand Neitzsche. Some of his seemingly vague, poetic aphorisms become relatively straightforward responses or critiques to ideas I had not yet encountered or properly digested.

Lastly, one of my favorite quotes.

He who believes all of a book is better off without books

Be careful taking thinkers like these at face value, or merely accepting any interpretation that serves to confirm bias. A good book is a onramp, or guide, into other ideas and more books. We must be careful how we nourish the brain in the same way we are about nourishing the body.