Good or bad by nature: Xunzi’s challenge
Read Xunzi’s chapter against Mencius and weigh two Confucian accounts of how people become good: by developing what is innate or by reshaping it through ritual and teachers.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Xunzi, the most important Confucian thinker after Mencius, taught at the Jixia academy in Qi and later served as magistrate of Lanling in the state of Chu; Han Fei and Li Si studied with him. His essays were arranged by the Han librarian Liu Xiang, and “Human Nature Is Bad” is chapter 23 of the received text. In another chapter he attacks Zisi and Mencius by name for distorting Confucius’s teaching. In the chapter “Human Nature Is Bad”, Xunzi answers Mencius by name. People are born loving profit, prone to envy and hatred and driven by the desires of the senses; following these inclinations leads to strife and disorder. Goodness is the product of deliberate effort, learned from teachers and from the rituals and standards that the sages created, just as warped wood needs a straightening frame.
Following the arguments
Nature and deliberate effort : Xunzi defines nature as what cannot be learned or worked at and goodness as wei, deliberate effort, so he accuses Mencius of confusing what is given with what is made. The warped board : As warped wood must be steamed against a straightening frame and blunt metal ground on a whetstone, people need teachers, models and ritual before they can become good. Anyone can become Yu : Anyone on the street has the capacity to understand benevolence and righteousness and could become a sage like Yu, but having a capacity is not the same as realizing it without effort.
Continuing the reading
Read the chapter after Mencius 6A1–8 and compare the images each side relies on, from flowing water and Ox Mountain to warped wood and the potter’s clay, before deciding how deep the disagreement really goes. Xunzi, the most important Confucian thinker after Mencius, taught at the Jixia academy in Qi and later served as magistrate of Lanling in the state of Chu; Han Fei and Li Si studied with him. His essays were arranged by the Han librarian Liu Xiang, and “Human Nature Is Bad” is chapter 23 of the received text. In another chapter he attacks Zisi and Mencius by name for distorting Confucius’s teaching.
The dispute concerns less whether people can become good than where goodness comes from and what education must do.
Your turn to think.
- How does Xunzi’s definition of nature differ from the one Mencius uses?
- Could both thinkers be right about different stages of moral growth?
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