QuestionsWhat makes something right?Fish, bear's paw and righteousness: something matters more than life
What makes something right?Virtue

Fish, bear's paw and righteousness: something matters more than life

The bear's paw and the fish; "giving up life for righteousness"

Mencius c. 372 BC · c. 289 BCHuman nature is good: everyone carries the seed of benevolence.
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What it claims

There are things more precious to humans than life: what matters first is to remain righteous, not to survive at any price.

Why

If we loved nothing more than life, we would do anything to save it; yet many refuse, because they hold to righteousness.

The same idea through history
Mencius320 BCMencius (c. 372-289 BC) starts from a choice at table to show that, between life and righteousness, the person of heart takes righteousness. He adds that this is not a privilege of sages: everyone has this feeling, the sages merely do not lose it.
Socrates399 BCIn Greece, a generation earlier, Socrates defends a neighbouring idea: it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. The two thinkers did not know each other.
In short

"Fish, bear's paw and righteousness: something matters more than life" is an argument by Mencius (Mencius 6A.10 (4th century BC), 320 BC) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: virtue). Its claim: There are things more precious to humans than life: what matters first is to remain righteous, not to survive at any price. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Mencius 6A.10 (4th century BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

Mencius starts with a meal: I like fish, I also like bear's paw, and if I cannot have both, I take the bear's paw, which I prefer. He then applies the same reasoning to two far graver things: life and righteousness (yi). If he must choose, he says, he takes righteousness. His argument rests on one remark: if we loved nothing more than life, why would we not do everything to keep it? Yet every day we see people who refuse. The text does not set out the argument in premises: the P1 to P5 form is our reconstruction of 6A.10.

P1We love life, and we also love righteousness.
P2When we cannot have two desired things together, we take the one we desire more: the fish gives way to the bear's paw.
P3Yet even in extremity we see people refuse life at that price: a starving traveller or a beggar will not take food thrown at them with contempt, though without it they die.
P4 · implicit premiseThese people really refuse for the sake of righteousness, not from mere pride or fear: so their refusal shows what they desire most.
P5This feeling is not reserved to sages: everyone has it, and sages are simply those who do not lose it.
Therefore there are things more precious to humans than life: what matters first is to remain righteous, not to survive at any price.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where someone refuses food thrown with contempt and prefers to die, yet righteousness is not what they desire most: they act from pride or fear. The refusal no longer proves anything.
With P4, the argument is valid: we see people refuse life at an unworthy price (P3); if they do so for righteousness (P4), they desire it more than life (P2), and this feeling is in everyone (P5). Without P4 it is not: someone may refuse to eat for a reason other than righteousness (fear, pride, a calculation about what follows). This is where the objections strike: Hobbes denies that anything can outrank life, Han Fei explains choices by interest, Kant refuses that a mere desire, even a noble one, be the foundation of morality.
Analogy. A climber may love life and love the mountain. If he gives up the summit to save a companion in trouble, we understand that he loves the companion more than the summit. The choice reveals the order of what we love.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Hobbes 1642 · attacks premise 4

Hobbes writes that everyone seeks what is good for them and shuns what is evil, but chiefly the chiefest of natural evils, death, and does so by an impulsion of nature as strong as that which makes a stone fall. For him, the first foundation of natural right is therefore to protect one's life. If Hobbes is right, someone who lets himself die does not do so first out of love of righteousness: another motive must be sought.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1642, after the author's death (-289).
The debate goes on (our summary) Mencius does not deny that people fear death: he says himself "I dislike death". His thesis is that there is something we dislike more, and he relies on an observed case (the traveller or beggar who refuses food thrown with contempt) and admits that many lose this feeling, for instance when they accept large salaries without regard to what is right. Hobbes describes a general tendency; Mencius looks for its exceptions.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disagreement on the facts and on how to read them: Hobbes makes self-preservation the rule, Mencius sees a desire that something else can outweigh. Each can explain the cases of sacrifice his own way (pride or fear for one, a sense of righteousness for the other), and nobody can read the inner motive. Open point.
H
Han Fei 240 BC · attacks premise 5

Han Fei writes that, in their calculations, people move towards safety and profit and flee danger and hardship. If he is right, the fine feeling Mencius speaks of is not shared by "all men": those who claim to follow it are not the rule, and a state counting on it would be heading for ruin.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in -240, after the author's death (-289).
The debate goes on (our summary) Han Fei writes about a century after Mencius, to advise a king on war and law, and does not name him here. Mencius answers in advance with his own observation: this feeling is in everyone, but many lose it, hence the importance of keeping it. Both agree that most people seek their advantage; they differ on what can be concluded.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Both camps describe the same fact (most people follow their interest) and draw opposite lessons: Mencius, that the sense of righteousness must be cultivated; Han Fei, that laws and penalties are needed because it cannot be relied on.
Kant 1785 · attacks premise 2

Kant holds that an action done from sympathy, even if it accords with duty and is amiable, has no true moral worth: it is on a level with other inclinations, like the love of honour. If, as in Mencius, righteousness is what we "love" most, the good act would be only a stronger taste, not obedience to a duty.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1785, after the author's death (-289).
The debate goes on (our summary) Mencius does not set duty against feeling: for him, the sense of righteousness is a feeling we have within us (see the argument of the child at the well) and the "desire" for righteousness is not a taste like the taste for fish. Kant holds on the contrary that only reason, against inclination, gives an act its worth. This is a basic disagreement about the nature of morality.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Basic disagreement: does morality rest on a natural moral feeling (Mencius) or on reason and duty against inclination (Kant)? Both traditions continue this debate today.