The Unity Of Body And Mind:an Research On Mencius’ Thought Of Body

The academic researches on Mencius are mainly on his theory of the nature of mind from different angles,but seldom on his thought of body.By the research methods of philology and hermeneutics,from the perspective of relationship between body and mind,with the original classic works of Mencius’,this article systematically explains Mencius’ concepts of body (form), mind, air, practice, and so on,analysing his basic structure of body(form),air and mind",and revealing his probable mechanism about the mutual unity of body and mind and the mutual transfromation of one of the two into the other.Body is not just the whole of the existence of life,but also the base and support for living.Mencius’ thought embodies the whole unity of body and mind of a living and the ethical virtue of the indivisibility of body and morality.To Mencius,body and morality are inseparable in unity,for on one hand,the moralization of the body is how virtue is infiltrated into the body through practice,which is a process of internalization from outside into inside;On the other hand,the embodiment of virtue is how the internalized virtue is externally shown off,displaying its full brilliance,which is a process of externalization from inside to outside.Mencius’ thought of the unity of body and mind and his thought of the indivisibility of body and morality have profound warning function of the materialistic pursuit and of the moral decay in the contemporary consumer society.