ICCI Home: Mèng Zǐ (372 – 289 BCE) on the moral organ

This post is part of a series on the 'history of social sciences'. Monday  Tuesday Wednesday  Thursday  Friday  Saturday   So far, in this mini-series on the (possibility of a) history of social sciences, I have only discussed the work of a philosopher that is relatively close to us, in terms of space and time. However, I believe that the same story can be told for far more distant philosophers. Consider, again, the idea of a moral module, advocated by contemporary psychologists. Elsewhere, I have argued that this idea is not totally new and that Scottish philosophers had come up with a similar idea in response to a similar problem (how to account for our innate, universal, unconscious and specific thoughts about right and wrong?) But this idea of a moral organ can be found much earlier, on another continent, Asia, during a different era, the third century before CE, in the work of Mèng Zǐ, usually known in the West as Mencius.