Mengzi Southern Lynchers Analysis

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Mengzi poses the idea that human nature is inherently good, and that personal reflection will help to cultivate benevolent behavior and ward off evil intentions. Furthermore, he stresses that it is the result of a treacherous environment and the lack of individual effort that a person commits wrongdoings and becomes wicked. The objection to his theories arises in the case of Southern lynchers within the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is contended that these people, in their attempts to suppress African-American civilians, engaged in terrible activities due to their inability to observe and recognize their actions as morally reprehensible. Mengzi would refute this demurral with the evidence that the lynchers were cultivated in a hostile …show more content…

As such, the lynchers were incapable of perceiving their actions as morally wrong. Mengzi would argue that all people are born with good natures, but those who err are not properly reflecting on their behavior. In comparison, the lynchers also had innate tendencies toward virtue which required personal effort to cultivate. Since they did not make any attempts at refining their virtue, their natural moral impulses became distorted and unrestrained. Despite this, there were also cases where people who were involved in the lynching mobs would look away and feel disgust toward these brutal murders. Mengzi would perhaps postulate that this is the heart feeling pity and rebelling in these evil acts, for “all humans have hearts that are not unfeeling toward others” (Mengzi, p. 45). They had, in their lapse of reflection, lost their inhibitions and turned to lynching as an answer. Mengzi would speculate that even though their morality was implicit in them, they were not offered the necessary “nutrition” for their sprouts to grow in a morally upright direction. The lynchers were not reflecting on their actions; in other words, they could not see the goodness that needed to be done and

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