Xunzi

Xunzi, "Master Xun", born Xun Kuang, was a Chinese philosopher of the third century BCE, the last of the three great Confucian thinkers of antiquity after Confucius and Mencius. Against Mencius he argued that human nature is bad, and that goodness is the product of deliberate effort, learning and ritual. A systematic and hard-headed thinker who taught two of the men who shaped the first Chinese empire, he did much to give Confucianism the form in which it later became the doctrine of the Han state.

Xun Kuang was born in the northern state of Zhao, probably around 310 BCE; the exact year is unknown and his dates are reconstructed from scattered references. In his own time he was often called Xun Qing, "Minister Xun", and some texts give his surname as Sun, probably to avoid the personal name of a later Han emperor.

As a young man he went to the state of Qi and studied at the Jixia Academy, the famous gathering of scholars near the Qi capital, where he encountered the leading schools of the day. After a period in the southern state of Chu he returned to Qi, where he became the most honoured scholar at the academy, three times performing the wine offering reserved for the senior master. Around 265 BCE, after being slandered, he left Qi. He visited the state of Qin, which he praised for its efficient government and austere officials while warning that it lacked Confucian learning, and debated military strategy at the court of Zhao.

In about 255 BCE Lord Chunshen, chief minister of Chu, made him magistrate of Lanling, in what is now southern Shandong. He lost the post when his patron was assassinated in 238 BCE but remained at Lanling, where he taught and wrote until his death, at an unknown date after 238 BCE. He was buried there.

Xunzi's most famous chapter opens with the claim that "human nature is bad", and that goodness comes from conscious activity (wei), meaning deliberate, cultivated effort. People are born with desires for profit, food and pleasure, with envy and hatred; if they simply follow these impulses, conflict and disorder result. Just as warped wood must be steamed and pressed against a straightening frame, and blunt metal must be ground on a whetstone, so people need teachers, rules and ritual to become good.

He framed this explicitly against Mencius, who had said that human nature contains sprouts of goodness. For Xunzi, Mencius confused what is given by nature with what must be learned. Yet the two shared more than the slogans suggest. Both believed that anyone could become a sage, and both stressed education and self-cultivation. The difference was that Xunzi saw morality as something people construct and impose on themselves, rather than something that grows from within.

If human nature is unruly, then the institutions invented by the ancient sage kings matter enormously. Xunzi gave ritual (li) a central place. Rituals, from funerals and sacrifices to the etiquette of daily life, assign people their roles and shares, shape their desires and channel their emotions into fitting forms. Since resources are limited and desires are not, a society without such distinctions would fall into a struggle for goods. Ritual is what makes communal life possible.

He also defended music, against the criticism of Mozi, arguing that music harmonises feeling and binds communities together. His opening chapter, "An Exhortation to Learning", insists that learning must never stop and that it transforms a person as indigo dye turns cloth bluer than the plant it came from.

Xunzi took a naturalistic view of Heaven (tian). Heaven, he wrote, follows its constant course and does not change because of good or bad rulers. Eclipses, falling stars and strange events are rare natural phenomena, not omens; the real portents to fear are human ones, such as neglected fields and corrupt government. Rituals such as praying for rain are worthwhile as cultural forms, but they do not make it rain. Human beings form a triad with Heaven and Earth, with their own task of ordering the world.

In "On the Correct Use of Names" he argued that words are fixed by convention, established by rulers, and that confusion about names leads to confusion in government. This put him in dialogue with the logicians of his era as well as with the Confucian tradition.

Xunzi's two most famous pupils were Han Fei and Li Si. Han Fei became the leading theorist of Legalism, and Li Si rose to be chancellor of Qin Shi Huang, helping to carry out the wars of unification and the harsh policies of the Qin dynasty, including the burning of books in 213 BCE. Both took Xunzi's emphasis on rules and his pessimism about human nature further than he did, while discarding his commitment to ritual and virtue. The connection later damaged his reputation, though it is unfair to make him responsible for the policies of his students.

The Xunzi, in 32 chapters, was put into its standard order by the Han librarian Liu Xiang. Unlike many early Chinese texts it is mostly regarded as the work of one author, written in long, carefully argued essays rather than scattered sayings, and it survives in good condition.

Xunzi's influence on Han dynasty Confucianism was large: several of his students transmitted classic texts, and passages on ritual and music in the Record of Rites closely parallel his writings. But from the Tang dynasty onwards his view of human nature was increasingly seen as a mistake. Neo-Confucian thinkers such as Zhu Xi placed Mencius among the Four Books and treated Xunzi as a deviation from the orthodox line. Since the twentieth century he has been re-evaluated in China and abroad as one of the most rigorous philosophers of the classical age, and his ideas on ritual, human nature and social order now attract wide interest in the study of Chinese philosophy.