"Giving up one's life for righteousness" and "Everyone has it" ── A new explanation of "I want fish" Mencius was the most famous thinker in the Warring States Period. Mencius is his masterpiece, which is full of rich and profound thoughts. "I want what I want" is one of the famous articles and has always been a compulsory article in middle school textbooks. However, some understanding of the main points of this article is debatable. Many people think that the central argument of "I Want Fish" is to sacrifice one's life for righteousness, which has the following explanations: In the first paragraph of the article, fish and bear's paw are used as metaphors at the beginning, which leads to the central argument: sacrifice one's life for righteousness. Then it discusses some people's understanding or attitude to "sacrifice one's life for righteousness", and finally "sublimates" the previous article with the view that "not only the wise have a heart, but everyone has a heart, and sages should not lose their ears". As for the second and third sections, they are all examples, respectively, from the two aspects of "righteousness is more important than life" and "righteousness is more important than benefit", specifically demonstrating "sacrifice one's life for righteousness" According to this view, Mencius put forward the view of "sacrificing life for righteousness" in his article, and then organized the whole text around this view, emphasizing that "righteousness" is more important than life and "injustice" is more important than death. I have to admit that this understanding is convincing. However, in the teaching research, the author found that there is still one point in the article that is very prominent and cannot be taken lightly. This view is that "not only wise men have a heart, but everyone has a heart, and sages should not lose their ears" (everyone has "righteousness"). Based on the three paragraphs of the article, this view is clearly put forward at the end of the first paragraph and discussed in detail in the second and third sections. First, it emphasizes that vagrants and beggars preserve righteousness, and then explains the reasons why some people lose righteousness from another angle, thus emphasizing the connotation that "everyone has righteousness". From the above point of view, Mencius expressed two completely different views in "I Want Fish": "Give up one's life for righteousness" and "Everyone has it". So, which one is more suitable as the central argument of this article? Is it the traditional view of "sacrificing one's life for righteousness"? To solve this problem, we might as well explore the background of the article and the author's thoughts first. This article is the tenth chapter of Gao Zishang. Gao Zishang mainly discusses the issue of "humanity". Mencius believed that human nature is good, specifically, "compassion is benevolence", "shame is righteousness", "disobedience is courtesy" and "right and wrong is wisdom". He believes that these are inherent in human beings. "The goodness of human nature is also good, even if it is water. "For some people,' going bad' is because of the loss of the day after tomorrow. However, Gao Zi believes that "there is no difference between good and bad human nature", that is to say, the good and evil of human nature is not innate, but the result of acquired cultivation. We can easily see that Mencius wrote such an article as if he wanted to "argue" with his son: your son thinks that "goodness in nature" is acquired, but I think it is innate, that is, "everyone has it, and saints should not mourn." "It is a scientific method to understand the connotation of the article by combining the background materials and the author's thoughts. Of course, logically speaking, the above "statement" is just a "guess". Moreover, although Mencius and Gao Zi had a "congenital and acquired" argument about "good nature", it can't be said that this article is advocating that "everyone has it". Therefore, the author does not want to take the above-mentioned "reasoning" as the way of conclusion, but only emphasizes the "possibility" of conclusion. However, this kind of "exploration" is obviously enlightening and convincing. To understand the essence of the problem, of course, it is more important to closely follow the thinking of the article itself. On the surface, the cognitive thinking of people who hold the view of "sacrificing their lives for righteousness" is reasonable. But after careful exploration, there are still some places that are difficult to explain. If the argument of the article is "sacrifice one's life for righteousness", then the so-called "living by exemplifying righteousness" in the second section is obviously not closely related to the end of the first section, and the so-called "benefiting by exemplifying righteousness" in the third section is even more sudden. Moreover, it is a bit "irrelevant" to interpret the content of the third section as an example to demonstrate that "giving up one's life for righteousness", because Mencius is talking about "benefit" rather than "fate" in this section. It seems illogical to think that this is the author's proof that righteousness is more important than benefit. The previous section has proved that "righteousness is more important than life". Where do you need to prove that "righteousness is more important than profit"? . Mencius paid great attention to the rigor of logic in discussing problems, and the context transformation was more natural and ingenious. How can this omission occur? The unreasonable situation, I think, is mainly that some people interpret this article in a "modern" way: define the main point of the article as "sacrifice one's life for righteousness", and then explore how the following materials serve the argument according to the characteristics of modern argumentative papers. It is worth mentioning that, in addition to the above problems, it is unreasonable to say that "sacrificing one's life for righteousness" is an article. The so-called argument should be a distinct value judgment or value orientation, and the article does not judge or evaluate the realm of "sacrificing life for justice". " "Giving up one's life for righteousness" is just a criterion advocated by the author, and then the article is born out of this practice and shows its views step by step. Therefore, it is "problematic" to define the argument of the article as "sacrificing one's life for righteousness". On the contrary, if "everyone is righteous" is the main viewpoint of Mencius, the above problems will be solved. In the first section, the article first introduces the topic of "sacrifice one's life for righteousness" through "fish and bear's paw", then discusses the reasons for doing so, and discusses that "righteousness exists" with hypothetical reasoning and general examples. Finally, the point of view that "everyone has righteousness (saints should not lose their ears)" is clearly put forward. Jiao Xun, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, also pointed out in The Justice of Mencius that Mencius repeatedly demonstrated here because "only those who have this conscience can do so" and "those who repeatedly believe that the wise must have this conscience". In the second section, according to the above "everyone has it", the hungry people and beggars on the road would rather starve to death than accept insulting charity, clarifying that they have "righteousness" in their hearts, which not only demonstrates their views with concrete examples, but also reflects the internal connection between contexts. The traditional view regards this section as the most powerful argument for "sacrificing one's life for righteousness", which makes sense on the surface, because there are both "vagrants" and "beggars". However, Xu Keqian, a professor at Nanjing Normal University and a doctor of philosophy, once wrote that this section is also about "meaning" in people's minds, not "taking meaning". People have intrinsic meaning, so people are different from animals. Animals can only be driven by instinct. If they want to eat, they can't help eating. If they want to sleep, they can't help sleeping. They can only be driven by the desire to eat color at any time. But people don't obey the authority of the gods or their own instincts, and they can transcend the instinctive desires and thoughts of life and death of animals, just like passers-by and beggars here, because they have righteousness in their hearts. In the third section, after the above-mentioned "saints should not lose their ears", the reasons for the loss of "righteousness" are discussed in detail from the opposite side: some people lose the principle of being a man for the sake of the beauty of their houses, the support of their wives and the gratitude of their poor friends, and "accept without distinguishing etiquette and righteousness" The results come from: extracurricular reading, Mid-Autumn Festival diary.