What Causes Moral Actions? -----Moral Feelings and Moral Reasoning in Mencius.

Abstract

The dispute of Mencius' moral ideas in the English world mainly focuses on three aspects: do moral feelings and cognition come from the root of consanguineous affection or the "heart-mind" /xin/ of universal love? What causes moral motivations: feelings, or reasoning? What actions are moral? This dispute arises due to the analysis of Mencius in a dichotomous frame. This paper reveals that there is no paradox between the root of consanguineous affection and universal love. Because the mind of "four sprouts" is unified, moral feelings and cognition interweave with each other to stimulate moral motivations. According to Mencius, there are three processes of moral development: the first is the natural process mainly with moral feelings; the second is the process of probing the root or cultivating, and the third is the process of expanding moral feelings with reasoning. Moral actions occur in the first and third processes.