What does xunzi say about human nature

Just as a father must take care of his children, the ruler must take care of the people, and in return, the people will respond with loyalty. The Confucians also offered a very practical motive to care for the people: if the people were dissatisfied with the ruler, they would not fight on his behalf, and the state would be ripe for annexation by its neighbors.

Xunzi diagnosed the main cause of disorder as a breakdown of the social hierarchy. When hierarchical distinctions are confused and people do not follow their proper roles, they compete indiscriminately to satisfy their desires. The way to put limits on this competition is to clarify social distinctions: such as between ruler and subject, between older brother and younger brother, or between men and women.

When everyone knows their place and what obligations and privileges they have, they will not contend for goods beyond their status.

This is the primary purpose of ritual: to clarify and enforce social distinctions, which will bring an end to contention for limited resources and improve social order. This, in turn, will ensure greater prosperity. The ritual tradition not only emphasized reciprocal obligations between people of different status, it had extremely precise regulations concerning who was allowed to own what kind of luxuries. There were rules concerning what colors of clothing different people could wear, who was allowed to ride in carriages, and what grave goods they could be buried with.

The point of all these rules is to enforce the distinctions necessary for social harmony and prevent people from reaching beyond their station.

Without the benefit of ritual principles to enforce the social hierarchy, the identity of human nature makes conflict inevitable. By nature we all desire the same things: fine food, beautiful clothing, wealth, and comfort. Xunzi believes desires are inevitable. When most people see something beautiful, they will desire it: only the sage can control his desires.

Because of limited resources, it is impossible for everyone to satisfy their desires for material goods. What people can do is decide whether to act on a desire or not. Ritual teaches people to channel, moderate, and in some cases transform their desires so they can satisfy them in appropriate ways.

When it is right to do so one satisfies them, and when that is not possible one moderates them. This allows both the partial satisfaction of desires and the maintenance of social harmony.

All of this is made possible by the ritual principles of the Way, when the alternative is the chaos of the state of nature. Hence, Xunzi wrote that Confucian teachings allow people to satisfy both the demands of ritual and their desires, when the alternative is satisfying neither. Another important part of governing is music.

The ancient Chinese believed that music was the most direct and effective way of influencing the emotions. Hence, only allowing the correct music to be played was crucial to governing the state. The right kinds of music, those attributed to the ancient sages, could both give people an outlet for emotions that could not be satisfied in other ways, like aggression, and channel their emotions and bring them in line with the Way.

The wrong kind of music would instead encourage wanton, destructive behavior and cause a breakdown of social order. Because of its powerful effect on the emotions, music is as important a tool as ritual in moral education and in governing. Much as Plato suggested in the Republic, Xunzi believes regulating music is one of the duties of the state. It must promulgate the correct music to give people a legitimate source of emotional expression and ban unorthodox music to prevent it from upsetting the balance of society.

As he does with virtuous people, Xunzi distinguishes different levels of rulers. The lowest is the ruler who relies on military power to expand his territory, taxes excessively without regard for whether his people have enough to sustain themselves, and keeps them in line with laws and punishments.

According to Xunzi, such a ruler is sure to come to a bad end. A ruler who governs efficiently, does not tax the people too harshly, gathers people of ability around him, and makes allies of the neighboring states can become a hegemon. The highest level is that of the true king who wins the hearts of the people through his rule by ritual principles. The moral power of the true king is so great that he can unify the whole country without a single battle, since the people will come to him of their own accord to live under his beneficent rule.

According to Xunzi, this is how the sage kings of the past were able to unify the country even though they began as rulers of small states. The best kind of government is government through the moral power acquired by following the Way.

Beginning with Confucius, it become ethicized into a kind of power or charisma that anyone who cultivated virtue and followed the Way developed. Through this moral power, a king could rule effectively without having to personally attend to the day-to-day business of governing. In Confucian thought, the most important role of the ruler is that of moral example, which is why the best government was that of a sage who followed the ritual principles of the Way.

Xunzi, while still believing in the efficacy of rule through moral force, is not quite as optimistic, which is likely related to his view on human nature. He thinks punishments will still be necessary because some people will break the law, but a sage king will only rarely need to employ punishments to keep the people in line, while a lord-protector or ordinary ruler will have to resort to them much more.

David Elstein Email: davidelstein world. Human Nature, Education, and the Ethical Ideal a. Education Like Confucius and Mencius, Xunzi is much more concerned with what kind of person to be than with rules of moral behavior or duty, and in this respect his view is similar to Western virtue ethics. The Ethical Ideal Xunzi often distinguishes three stages of progress in study: the scholar, the gentlemen, and the sage, though sometimes the sage and the gentleman seem to be equivalent for him.

The Heart In addition to having a teacher, a critical requirement for study is having the proper frame of mind, or more precisely, heart, since early Chinese thought considered cognition to be located in the heart. Social and Political Thought a. Government structure The Warring States period, during which Xunzi lived, was a time of great social change and instability.

Ritual and Music Xunzi diagnosed the main cause of disorder as a breakdown of the social hierarchy. Moral Power As he does with virtuous people, Xunzi distinguishes different levels of rulers.

Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, Dubs, Homer H. London: Arthur Probsthain, Goldin, Paul. Rituals of the Way. Chicago: Open Court, Ivanhoe, Philip J. Confucian Moral Self Cultivation. Indianapolis: Hackett, An introduction to Confucian thought, focusing on the theme of self cultivation. Includes a chapter on Xunzi. Kline, T. III and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi.

An excellent anthology bringing together much of the recent important work on Xunzi. The bibliography includes virtually every English publication related to Xunzi. Knoblock, John, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press, , , The only complete English translation of the Xunzi, with extensive introductory material.

Machle, Edward. New York: Columbia University Press, An excerpted translation, including many of the more philosophically interesting chapters. It is easier for non-specialists than Knoblock. Author Information David Elstein Email: davidelstein world.

BCE , which is known to contain serious distortions, especially in its treatment of famous philosophers Kern Sima Qian relates that Xunzi polished his voluminous writings in his old age, but they do not survive in his own recension.

The general consensus today is that Xunzi is a collection of predominantly authentic essays, but certainly not organized in a manner that Xun Kuang himself had authorized e. There are also some chapters with generic instructional material, as well as poems and rhymed riddles that are rarely studied Knechtges First, the two keywords need to be unpacked. Mencius — BCE? In effect, both Xunzi and Mencius argued that human beings all have the capacity to become good, even though some people develop this capacity and others do not Graham ; Shun — And if we achieve any goodness, it must be because of our artifice: whereas.

Xunzi For this reason, in addition to stylistic features that trouble some readers, the chapter is occasionally impugned as corrupt or inauthentic Robins —02; Zhou Chicheng Whereas Mencians have always emphasized looking inwards for moral direction—sometimes complicated by the acknowledgment that the heart can be corrupted—self-cultivation in the Xunzian style is inconceivable without looking outwards.

What are rituals and why did the sages institute them? If people follow their desires, then boundaries cannot contain them and objects cannot satisfy them. Thus the Former Kings restrained them and established for them ritual and morality in order to divide them [into classes]. Xunzi 4. Sometimes these rituals are described as efficient social conventions e. First, Xunzi elsewhere explicitly denies that an arbitrarily chosen set of rituals would be effective.

The rituals of the sage kings confirm the distinctions that we are bound to make by nature the core text is Xunzi 5. Indeed, if they did not, they would be mere instruments of expedience, not rituals. These dimensions become clear when Xunzi begins to discuss specific rituals and their purposes. We observe regulations concerning funerary ceremonies and grave goods, for example, in order to learn how to avoid incivility and miserliness Similarly, the mandatory three-year mourning period for deceased rulers and parents helps us conduct ourselves properly by providing suitable forms for us to express emotions that are so deep as to be potentially debilitating:.

When a wound is colossal, its duration is long; when pain is profound, the recovery is slow. The fact that the host fetches the guest of honor himself, but expects the other guests to arrive on their own, underscores the distinctions that need to be drawn between noble and base. And the detail that each participant toasts the next, serially and according to their ages, demonstrates that one can align society according to seniority without excluding anyone. When the guest of honor retires, the host bows and escorts him out, and the formal occasion comes to an end: this is to make it known that one can feast at leisure without becoming disorderly.

The clear implication is that by taking part in the rite, we can gradually comprehend the moral principles that the sages wished us to embody Xunzi The crucial point is that the sages created both. Like all Confucians, Xunzi accepts that human beings have certain irrepressible impulses Xunzi The problem is that unreflective outbursts driven solely by emotional responses may cause harm, and thus we are enjoined to be mindful of our impulses, rather than to extinguish them compare Xunzi To aid us in this process, the Sages left behind appropriate musical compositions that we can use to channel our need to express ourselves.

When music is centered and balanced, the people are harmonious and not dissipated. When music is stern and grave, the people are uniform and not disorderly. When the people are harmonious and uniform, the army is firm and the citadels secure; enemy states dare not invade. As the last quote intimates, the proper implementation of ritual is also decisive in politics and international relations. When kings and dukes follow [the rituals], that is how they obtain the world; when they do not follow them, that is how they bring about the perdition of their altars of soil and grain.

Such counselors, moreover, should have a Confucian orientation Xunzi 8. The judgment of most ancient writers is that Qin never corrected this weakness. Xunzi places so much emphasis on the role of the rituals in moral self-cultivation that one might ask how the sages managed to perfect themselves when they did not have such a model themselves. But elsewhere the question is addressed more fully. The rituals, it turns out, are the equivalent of helpful signposts.

When a ruler governs a state well, there are bound to be good results; when a ruler governs a state badly, there are bound to be bad results. Disasters can have no long-term consequences because a well governed state will prosper even in the face of disasters, and a poorly governed state will be vanquished even if it avoids disasters altogether. Consequently, Heaven plays a sure but indirect role in determining our fortune or misfortune.

Heaven never intercedes directly in human affairs, but human affairs are certain to succeed or fail according to a timeless pattern that Heaven determined before human beings existed. He laid great stress on education, self-cultivation, statecraft, and formal ritual. His theory of ritual, in particular, was one of his great contributions to Chinese thought. He said that the formal rituals, especially those practiced in ordinary life, such as marriage, funerals, and ancestral sacrifice, were devised by the great Sages of the past in order to embellish or adorn human life by giving us structures through which we can fully develop and express our natural emotions.

Such feelings as joy, grief, and reverence are distinctly human characteristics, and so to fully realize them is to be fully human. Ritual is a means of bringing into existence a fully human world from the raw material of our emotions; it is a means of satisfying certain psychological needs and desires without encroaching on those of others.

Only the ancient Sages could have achieved this delicate balance. Sacrificial rites give expression to the feelings of remembrance and longing for the dead. There inevitably come times when one is overwhelmed by emotions of grief and loss, and a loyal minister or a filial son finds that, even while others are given to the enjoyment of congenial company, these sorrowful emotions arrive.

If when they come to him, and he is greatly moved, he nonetheless represses them, his feelings of remembrance and longing will be thwarted and unfulfilled, and his ritual practice will be deficient and incomplete. Therefore the ancient kings established certain forms so that the duty of honoring those who deserve honor and demonstrating affection for those who deser e affection might be fulfilled.

Therefore I say that the sacrificial rites give expression to the feelings of remembrance and longing. They are the perfection of loyalty, good faith, love, and reverenced, and the flourishing of ritual deportment and refined demeanor The noble [superior] person understands them as the human way; the hundred names [common people] think of them as matters having to do with spirits.

In the last sentence he also makes an interesting point concerning ritual and belief. Since the Sages had a psychological purpose in creating the rituals, their efficacy does not depend upon belief in the existence of ancestral spirits or their ability to respond to sacrifice. Common people believe in those things, but a junzi understands their importance and efficacy in psychological, not theological, terms.

In this respect and others, Xunzi sounds extremely modern to our ears. Human nature is evil; goodness derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which one was born disappears.

One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and principle with which one was born is lost. Therefore one must be transformed by the example of a teacher and guided by the way of ritual and rightness before one will attain modesty and yielding, accord with refinement and rituaol, and return to order.

From this perspective it is apparent that human nature is evil and that its goodness is the result of conscious activity.

So why, then, does he come to the opposite conclusion about human nature? He is quite explicit about his disagreement with Mencius:. Mencius said, The fact that human beings learn shows that their nature is good. I say this is not so; this comes of his having neither understood human nature nor perceived the distinction between the nature and conscious activity.