| Sumario: | Kin selection is an important biological process which has significant implications for ethics in general, and Ruist (i.e., Confucian) ethics in particular. Chinese and non-Chinese scholars alike have directed attention to the link between kin selection and Mencian thought, and some of them take the former to be confirmatory of the latter. Given that the Four Sprouts idea is central to Mencian ethics, the following question can be posed: is kin selection confirmatory of the Four Sprouts idea? We conclude that the answer to this question is a qualified "no": kin selection not only fails to positively confirm the Four Sprouts idea, but rather necessitates contemporary interpreters of the Mencius to re-evaluate the cogency of many of its various historical readings. Such readings, if they are to be compatible with kin selection: will need to place due emphasis on the effects of culture; will need to admit that the Four Sprouts are common to some species other than just humans; and must not take the Four Sprouts to be purely metaphysical. If we are to take kin selection as supportive of contemporary interpretations of Mencian thought today, we must search for such support somewhere other than in the Four Sprouts idea.
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