• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.57
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• pp.91-125
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• 2018

This study aims at attempting to make a new interpretation of Mencius from the point of social welfare. The thoughts of social welfare, found from Mencius, are temporal and humanistic and near to those in nowadays. Social welfare began under the name of philanthropic work, relief work, charitable work or social work from the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century on. Welfare means the whole social activities such as satisfying the fundamental desires of the social members, ensuring the conditions of their lives, and ultimately achieving social integration and stability. It means the conditions of their lives and wellbeing. Wellbeing means the minimal physical desires and psychological stability. The realization of the economic system through concept of steady livelihood and steady mind, tax system and well-field system, proposed by Mencius, can be ensured by the whole social activities such as ensuring the stable lives of the social members, enriching and satisfying their happiness and ultimately achieving social integration and stability. The thoughts of Mencius include people-as-root idea, which regards people as most important and tries to solve the instability and inequality that are the structural vulnerabilities in modern capitalist society. His concept of Way of the king means promoting people's sense of happiness through education of morality, based upon the people-as-root idea and filial and fraternal responsibilities. The main ideas of social welfare include living like a human being, ensuring minimal physical and psychological stabilities through social welfare system and welfare policy, enriching human dignity and freedom and enhancing the quality of lives. The thoughts of Mencius include all the above ideas. In particular, he desired to establish ethically and morally stable society by economically implementing the well-field system in Zhou dynasty, based upon politically benevolent governance of the politicians. That society was the people-as-root society, the realization of which was the ideal society Mencius desired to establish, and the goal of his thoughts on social welfare. This study, among the thoughts of Mencius, investigated his ideas on social welfare and the practical ethics for applying them to real society. In addition, to understand his ideas on social welfare, not only the social and economic backgrounds and conditions but also the political ideas at that time were also investigated. This will provide the opportunity to make more in-depth research of the elements of social welfare intrinsically contained in his thoughts.