Xun Zi (Hsun Tzu)

     Jeremiah, of Granite Studio fame, asks a question:

In the past we've had a bit of debate in our department when it comes time to teach our 5000-years-in-9-weeks-from-Yao-to-Mao course. After Confucius, we usually discuss Mencius and Xunzi. What is Xunzi's exact view of human nature. 人之性恶 seems like it should be clear enough, but the differing opinions in our department run the gamut. Some feel that Xunzi is advocating that human nature is ultimately amoral and people act according to their own self-interest. This wing fears setting up too stark a dichotomy of Mencius=people good/Xunzi=people bad. I've heard other interpretations that put Xunzi somewhat closer to the Judeo-Christian notion of original sin. There's also the fear that students will confuse Xunzi as a Legalist or at the very last a "Legalist Lite" (Because of Xunzi's strong influences in that camp. Wasn't Han Fei supposed to have been a student of Xunzi?)

Any thoughts? Worth a post?

      First off, I will readily admit that my understanding of Xunzi is limited.  I've read Burton's Basic Writings only once and picked up something from various secondary analyses, most notably Graham. I haven't yet taught Xun Zi in my classes.  So, my thoughts will not do much to influence the debate.  But I am happy to offer two meager cents (that's what blogs are for, after all).

      I find the first alternative - i.e. don't draw too stark a dichotomy with Mencius - to be the most sensible, given my limited knowledge.  Even though they offer different summarzing statements on human nature, they are both deeply commited to a project of Confucian perfectionism.  This is what distinguishes Xun Zi from the Legalists, who could care less about moral transformation, it seems to me, and are much more concerned with power and its maintenance.  Take this quote from the last chapter of Basic Writings, which has that infamous title, "Man's Nature is Evil:"

You have said, someone may object, that a sage has arrived where he has through the accumulation of good acts.  Why is it, then, that everyone is not able to accumulate good acts in the same way?  I would reply: everyone is capable of doing so, but not everyone can be made to do so.  The petty man is capable of becoming a gentleman, yet he is not willing to do so; the gentleman is capable of becoming a petty man but he is not willing to do so.  The petty man and the gentleman are perfectly capable of changing places; the fact that they do not actually do so is what I mean when I say that they are capable of doing so but cannot be made to do so. Hence it is correct to say that the man in the street is capable of becoming a Yu but it is not necessarily correct to say that he will in fact find it possible to do so.  But although he does not find it possible to do so does not prove that he is incapable of doing so.  (167)

      The element of agency in this passage, the sense of personal responsibility and capability for moral improvement, is certainly closer to Mencius than to Han Fei Tzu.  It suggests that what is meant by "human nature" - xing - does not carry the deterministic connotation that we associate with it in our modern (Western, rationalist) context.  The difference between Mencius and Xun Zi, then, is not really a matter of irreconcilable categories of "human nature" as much as it is a tension between optimistic and pessisitic assessments of moral perfectability.

    On the "original sin" analogy: I would avoid it.  Any allusion to a Christian notion of God obscures more than it reveals. (The thing that bothers me the most about Wilhelm's translation the the I Ching is his invocation of "God" in a Christian manner)  God, in that sense, is really not a part of the lexicon or mental toolkit of ancient Chinese thinkers.  Whenever we bring "God" into an explication of Chinese thought, we immediately have to qualify its use or risk leaving an impression that an omnipotent, anthropomorphic, transcendent entity is somehow a part of Xun Zi's thinking, which it isn't.   Here's Frederick Mote (Intellectual Foundations of China, p. 56):

The West's theologically buttressed predilictions are to read into Hsun Tzu some intimation of original sin or find some confirmation of its own view that human nature rests in a God-created cosmos.  The disagreement between Mencius and Hsun Tzu has thus tended to assume proportions it never had in the traditional Chinese view.  For although the two squarely disagreed on the definition of basic human nature and although Hsun Tzu expressed his disagreement with his predecessor in terms that revealed his general contempt for Mencius' intellectual capacities, of far greater importance in the history of Confucian thought has been their complete agreement on the perfectability of humankind.

   I'll stop here with a picture of Xun Zi himself:

Comments

[Jeremiah]

Thanks for such a fast and thoughtful response, Sam. I agree with your ideas and would argue that what makes Xunzi a Confucian, as opposed to his Legalist students, was this idea that human beings could be corrected, through ritual and education. Perhaps his most famous example was that of the warped piece of wood that could, through steaming and bending, be made straight. I wonder what Zhuangzi, he of the original useless tree, might make of that metaphor.