In Chapter 10 of "Gaozi 1", Mencius starts from the fact that you cannot have your cake and eat it too, and discusses the life proposition that you cannot have both life and morality, and you should sacrifice your life to gain morality. Mencius inherited Confucius' lofty life spirit of "a man with lofty ideals and benevolence, who does not seek life to harm his benevolence, but who kills himself to achieve benevolence" ("The Analects of Confucius? 6?1 Wei Linggong"), and advocated that morality is higher than life; he advocated that for the sake of noble morality, he would rather To live an ignoble existence; to advocate that for the sake of noble morality, one would rather not surrender and avoid death.
The "righteousness" mentioned by Mencius represents "Tao" and "The Perfect Good", and raised "righteousness" to a prominent height, which is different from Confucius's emphasis on "benevolence" and "propriety". There is an obvious difference. Theoretically speaking, from Confucius's "sacrifice one's life to achieve righteousness" to Mencius's "sacrifice one's life for righteousness" means that moral theory changes from idealization and internalization to reality and externalization, from the voluntary principle that pays attention to morality to the norms that pay attention to morality. Changes in principles. Mencius believed that "righteousness" should be extended and implemented in all behaviors, self-sustaining, self-loving, self-respecting, and self-respecting. In this way, no matter where you go, whatever you do will naturally meet the requirements of "righteousness." Furthermore, people are concrete people living in society. They play various roles in society and are given different connotations by society. Therefore, Mencius said: "It is not righteous to take something that does not exist." ("Devotion to the Heart"), the standard of "non-existence" should not only be abstract spiritual pursuits such as personality, integrity, dignity, etc., but also the specific responsibilities and obligations assigned to each person by society. In this way, "righteousness" is the principles and norms regarding the order of the world. These principles and norms give everyone specific responsibilities, obligations and behavioral norms in society, that is, status. People's behavior conforms to the "status". "righteousness", otherwise it is "unrighteousness". What Mencius objects to is that everyone forgets "benevolence and righteousness" and focuses on "profit". He opposes "forgetting righteousness when seeing benefit" and "benefiting after righteousness". He believes that if everyone is "beneficial to each other", "those who are ministers are benevolent to serve their king, those who are sons are benevolent to serve their fathers, and those who are younger brothers are benevolent to serve their elders" ("Gao Zi") (Part 2)), it will lead to people disregarding their integrity, fighting against each other, and causing chaos in the world. Therefore, he advocated that a gentleman should be "benevolent to the people and love things" ("Devotion to the Heart"), and when "you can't have your cake and eat it too", you should sacrifice your life for righteousness.