What Neither Riches Nor Chains Can Move

answered by Mencius, Gaozi I

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🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Amistad (1997)

dir. Steven Spielberg · USA

Is it a truth prior to law, or something the law grants, that no person can be another's property? When a system treats a human as a thing, where is the ground for saying that freedom was not permitted by anyone but was that person's own from the first?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Do I regard a person's dignity as something granted by another, forgetting it was his own from the first?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

我固有之也

仁義禮智非由外鑠我也我固有之也

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Benevolence and righteousness are not fused into me from without; I possess them from the first.

💡 TL;DR

Mencius held that the root of our humanity is not conferred from without but is ours from the first.

📝The Classic Answers

Mencius held that the root of our humanity is not conferred from without but is ours from the first. So too are freedom and dignity. When a system treats a person as a thing, what he seeks to reclaim is not a newly won right but a place that was his from the beginning. No one becomes human by another's permission. I withdraw the gaze that sees dignity as a favor granted, and look again from where it was his own all along.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If you treated someone's right today as something you 'grant,' remind yourself again that it was his to begin with.

📖 Classic Source: Mencius, Gaozi I. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.