Sensibility and moral values in Mengzi’s metaethics

ABSTRACT This paper examines the current scholarship on Mengzi’s metaethical thoughts and reconstructs Mengzi’s view to contribute to our understanding of the relation between sensibility and the apparent objectivity of morality. I first overview two features of morality that an adequate metaethical theory needs to account for—the apparent objectivity and the motivational force of moral values, highlighting the potential of Mengzi’s thought to explain both. Then I examine previous reconstructions of Mengzi’s metaethics. Both the naturalism approach and the sensibility theory approach capture important features of Mengzi’s view but have defects. I argue that Mengzi’s view may help revise a sensibility theory that models moral properties on secondary qualities like colors, and thus, preserves the alleged merit of it—being able to account for the two features of morality.