great early architects of Confucian philosophy. In many ways, he
offers a more complete and sophisticated defense of Confucianism than
Mencius. Xunzi lived toward the end of the Warring States period
(453-221 BCE), generally regarded as the formative era for most later
Chinese philosophy. It was a time of great variety of thought,
comparable to classical Greece, so Xunzi was acquainted with many
competing ideas. In reaction to some of the other thinkers of the
time, he articulated a systematic version of Confucianism that
encompasses ethics, metaphysics, political theory, philosophy of
language, and a highly developed philosophy of education. Xunzi is
known for his belief that ritual is crucial for reforming humanity's
original nature. Human nature lacks an innate moral compass, and left
to itself falls into contention and disorder, which is why Xunzi
characterizes human nature as bad. Ritual is thus an integral part of
a stable society. He focused on humanity's part in creating the roles
and practices of an orderly society, and gave a much smaller role to
Heaven or Nature as a source of order or morality than most other
thinkers of the time. Although his thought was later considered to be
outside of Confucian orthodoxy, it was still very influential in China
and remains a source of interest today. (See Romanization systems for
Chinese terms.)
1. Life and Work
Xunzi ("Master Xun") is the common appellation for the philosopher
whose full name was Xun Kuang. He is also known as Xun Qing, "Minister
Xun," after an office he held. He was born in the state of Zhao in
north-central China around 310 BCE. As a young man he studied in the
state of Qi in the northeast, which had the greatest concentration of
philosophers of the age. Xunzi's writings show him to be well
acquainted with all the doctrines current at the time, which he
probably came in contact with during this period of his life. Leaving
Qi, he traveled to many of the other states that made up China at the
time, and was briefly employed by some of them. His last post ended
when his patron was assassinated in 238 BCE, ending his chances to put
his theories of government into practice. Xunzi may have lived to see
China unified by the authoritarian state of Qin in 221 BCE. If so, he
certainly must have been disappointed that two of his former students,
Li Si and Han Feizi, helped counsel Qin to victory when the Qin
government was steadfastly opposed to Xunzi's ideas of government
through moral power. The Qin dynasty was long remembered as a time of
strict laws and draconian punishments, and Xunzi's association with
two of its architects probably was one factor in the later
marginalization of his thought.
Like most philosophical works of the time, the Xunzi that we have
today is a later compilation of writings associated with him, not all
of which were necessarily written by Xunzi himself. The current
version of the Xunzi is divided into thirty-two books, about
twenty-five of which are considered mostly or wholly authentic and
others of which are considered representative of his thought, if not
his actual writings. This is probably the largest collection of early
Chinese philosophical writings that can be plausibly attributed to one
author. The Xunzi is also notable for its style. Comparatively little
of it is written in the dialogue format of works like the Mencius, and
there are none of the fanciful parables of the Zhuangzi. Most books
normally attributed to Xunzi are sustained essays on one topic that
appear to have be written as more or less unified pieces, though there
are often sections of verse and two books that are merely compilations
of poetry. In these writings, Xunzi carefully defines his own position
and raises objections to rival thinkers in a way that renders his work
more recognizable as philosophy than that of many other early Chinese
thinkers.
2. The Way and Heaven
The most important concept in Xunzi's philosophy is the Way (dao).
This is one of the most common terms of Chinese philosophy, though all
thinkers define it somewhat differently. Though the term originally
referred to a road or path, it became extended to a way of doing
things, a way of acting, or as it was used in philosophy, the right
way to live. In Xunzi's case, he means the human way, the way of good
government and the proper way of behaving, not the Way of Heaven or
Nature as Laozi and Zhuangzi define it, and as Mencius often suggests.
In fact, Xunzi is notable for having probably the most rationalistic
view of Heaven and the supernatural in the early period. Xunzi claims
that the Way was first pointed out by particularly wise and gifted
people he calls sages (a common term for an exemplar in early Chinese
thought), and following the Way as it has been handed down from the
past will result in a stable, prosperous, peaceful society, while
going against it will have the opposite results. While certain aspects
of the Way, such as particular rituals, are certainly created by
humanity, whether the Way as a whole is created or discovered remains
a matter of scholarly debate.
Unlike many other early philosophers, Xunzi does not believe Heaven
gets involved in human affairs. Heaven was sometimes considered to be
an anthropomorphic god, sometimes an impersonal force that
automatically rewarded the good and punished the bad, but in Xunzi's
view Heaven is much like Nature: it acts as it always does, neither
helping the good or harming the bad. The Way is not the Way because
Heaven approves of it, it is the Way because it is good for people. In
the chapter "Discourse on Heaven" (chapter 17, also translated as
"Discourse on Nature"), Xunzi devotes himself to refuting these other
views of Heaven, most prominently that of the Mohists. Heaven does not
reward good kings with peace and prosperity, nor punish tyrants by
having them deposed. These results come about through their own good
or bad decisions. Having a good harvest and sufficient food is not a
sign of Heaven's favor, it is the result of wise agricultural policy.
Similarly, events like eclipses and floods are not signs of Heaven's
displeasure: they are simply things that sometimes happen. One might
wonder at them as unusual occurrences, but it is not right to be
afraid of them or consider them ominous. Worrying about Heaven's favor
is a waste of time; it is better to be prepared for whatever might
happen. There will be some natural disasters, but if one is prepared
they will not cause harm.
Interestingly, though Xunzi has this rational view of Nature, which
extends to spirits and gods as well, he never suggests eliminating
religious rituals that are directed toward them, such as sacrifices
and divination. One must perform them as part of the ritual system
that binds society together, but one does not perform expecting any
results. In "Discourse on Heaven," Xunzi wrote, "You pray for rain and
it rains. Why? For no particular reason, I say. It is just as though
you had not prayed for rain and it rained anyway." When it rains after
you pray for rain, it is just like when it rains when you didn't pray
for it. Yet during a drought, officials must still pray for rain—not
because it has any effect on the natural world, but because of its
effect on people. What Xunzi believes ritual does will be examined
later.
In Xunzi's view, the best thing to do is understand what Nature does
and what humanity does, and concentrate on the latter. Not only is it
wrong to believe that Heaven intervenes in human affairs, it is
useless to speculate about why Nature is the way it is or to try to
help it along. Xunzi is interested in practical knowledge, and
speculation about Nature is not useful. In this respect, he could be
considered anti-metaphysical, since he has no interest in how the
world works or what it is. His concern is what people should do, and
anything that might confuse or detract from that is a waste of time.
We know that Nature is invariable, and we know the Way to get what we
need from Nature to live, and that is all we need to know. This kind
of division between knowledge of the human world and knowledge of
Heaven may have been partially influenced by Zhuangzi, but while
Zhuangzi considers knowing Heaven to be important, Xunzi does not.
3. Human Nature, Education, and the Ethical Ideal
a. Human Nature
As Mencius is known for the slogan "human nature is good," Xunzi is
known for its opposite, "human nature is bad." Mencius viewed
self-cultivation as developing natural tendencies within us. Xunzi
believes that our natural tendencies lead to conflict and disorder,
and what we need to do is radically reform them, not develop them.
Both shared an optimism about human perfectability, but they viewed
the process quite differently. Xunzi envisioned that humanity was once
in a state of nature reminiscent of Hobbes. Without study of the Way,
people's desires will run rampant, and they will inevitably find
themselves in conflict in trying to satisfy their desires. Left to
themselves, people will fall into disorder, poverty and conflict,
living a life that would be, as Hobbes put it, "poor, nasty, brutish,
and short." It was this insistence that human nature is bad that was
most often condemned by later thinkers, who rejected Xunzi's view in
favor of the idea, traced to Mencius, that people are naturally good.
Xunzi offers several arguments against Mencius's position. He defines
human nature as what is inborn and does not need to be learned. He
argues that if people were good by nature, there would be no need for
ritual and social norms. The sages would not have had to create them,
and they would not need to have been handed down through the
generations. They were created precisely because people do not act in
accordance with them naturally. He also notes that people desire the
good, and on the principle that one desires what one doesn't already
have, this shows that people are not good. He gives several
illustrations of what life is like in the state of nature, without any
education on ritual and morality. Xunzi does not believe that people
are evil, that they deliberately violate the rules of morality, taking
a perverse pleasure in doing so. They have no natural conception of
morality at all: they are morally blind by nature. Their desires bring
them into conflict because they don't know any better, not because
they enjoy conflict. In fact, Xunzi believes people do not enjoy it at
all, which is why they desire the kind of life that results from good
order brought about through the rituals of the sages.
Like Mencius, Xunzi believed human nature is the same in everyone: no
one starts off with moral principles. The original nature of Yao (a
legendary sage king) and Jie (a legendary tyrant) was the same. The
difference was in how they cultivated themselves. Yao reformed his
original nature, Jie did not. In this way, Xunzi emphasizes the
essential perfectability of everyone. Human nature is bad, but it is
not incorrigible, and in fact Xunzi was rather optimistic about the
possibility of overcoming the demands of desires that result in the
state of nature. Though Confucius suggests that some people are better
off by nature than others, Mencius and Xunzi seem to agree that
everyone starts out the same, though they differ on the content of
that original state. Though Xunzi believes that it is always possible
to reform oneself, he recognizes that in reality this will not always
happen. In most cases, the individual himself has to make the first
step in attempting to reform, and Xunzi is rather pessimistic about
people actually doing this. They cannot be forced to do so, and they
may in practice be unable to make the choice to improve, but for
Xunzi, this does not mean that in principle it is impossible for them
to change.
b. 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 goal of
Xunzi's ethics is to become a person who knows and acts according to
the Way as if it were second nature. Because human nature is bad,
Xunzi emphasizes the importance of study to learn the Way. He compares
the process of reforming one's nature to making a pot out of clay or
straightening wood with a press-frame. Without the potter, the clay
would never become a pot on its own. Similarly, people will not be
able to reform their nature without a teacher showing them what to do.
Xunzi's concern is primarily moral education; he wants people to
develop into good people, not people who know a lot of facts. He
emphasizes the transformative aspect of education, where it changes
one's basic nature. Xunzi laid out a program of study based on the
works of the sages of the past that would teach proper ritual behavior
and develop moral principles. He was the first to offer an organized
Confucian curriculum, and his curriculum became the blueprint for
traditional education in China until the modern period.
Practice was an important aspect of Xunzi's course of education. A
student did not simply study ritual, he performed it. Xunzi recognized
that this performative aspect was crucial to the goal of transforming
one's nature. It was only through practice that one could realize the
beauty of ritual, ideally coming to appreciate it for itself. Though
this was the end of education, Xunzi appealed to more utilitarian
motives to start the student on the program of study. As noted above,
he discussed how desires would inevitably be frustrated in the state
of nature. Organizing society through ritual was the only way people
could ever satisfy even some of their desires, and study of ritual was
the best way to achieve satisfaction on a personal level. Through
study and practice, one could learn to appreciate ritual for its own
sake, not just as a means to satisfy desires. Ritual has this power to
transform someone's motives and character. The beginning student of
ritual is like a child learning to play the piano. Maybe she doesn't
enjoy playing the piano at first, but her parents take her out for ice
cream after each lesson, so she goes along with it because she gets
what she wants. After years of study and practice, she might learn to
appreciate playing the piano for its own sake, and will practice even
without any reward. This is what Xunzi imagines will happen to the
dedicated student of ritual: he starts out studying ritual as a means,
but it becomes an end in itself as part of the Way.
c. 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. These were all terms in
common use in philosophical discourse of the time, especially in
Confucian thought, but Xunzi gives them a unique twist. He describes
the achievements of each stage slightly differently in several places,
but what he seems to mean is that a scholar is someone who has taken
the first step of wishing to study the Way of the ancient sages and
adopts them as the model for correct conduct; the gentleman has
acquired a good deal of learning, but still must think about what the
right thing to do is in a situation; and the sage has wholly
internalized the principles of ritual and morality so that his action
flows spontaneously without the need for thought, yet never goes
beyond the bounds of what is proper. Using the piano analogy, the
scholar has made up his mind to study the piano and is practicing
basic scales. The gentleman is fairly skilled, but still needs to look
at the music in front of him to know what to play. The sage is like a
concert pianist who not only plays with perfect technique, but also
adds his own style and unique interpretation of the music,
accomplishing all this without ever consciously thinking about what
notes to play. As the pianist is still playing someone else's music,
the sage does not make up new standards of conduct; he still follows
the Way, but he makes it his own. Yet even then, at this highest
stage, Xunzi believes there is still room for learning. Study is a
lifelong process that only ends at death, much as concert pianists
must still practice to maintain their skills.
The teacher plays an extremely important role in the course of study.
A good teacher does not simply know the rituals, he embodies them and
practices them in his own life. Just as one would not learn piano from
someone who had just read a book on piano pedagogy but never touched
an actual instrument, one should not study from someone who has only
learned texts. A teacher is not just a source of information; he is a
model for the student to look up to and a source of inspiration of
what to become. A teacher who does not live up to the Way of the sages
in his own life is no teacher at all. Xunzi believes there is no
better method of study than learning from such a teacher. In this way,
the student has a model before of him of how to live ritual
principles, so his learning does not become simple accumulation of
facts. In the event that such a teacher is unavailable, the next best
method is to honor ritual principles sincerely, trying to embody them
in oneself. Without either of these methods, Xunzi believes learning
degenerates into memorizing a jumble of facts with no impact on one's
conduct.
d. Discovering the Way
Given Xunzi's insistence on the importance of teachers to transmit the
Way of the sages of the past and his belief that people are all bad by
nature, he must face the question of how the first sages discovered
the Way. Xunzi uses the metaphor of a river ford for the true Way:
without the people who have gone before to leave markers, those coming
after would have no way of knowing where the deep places are, and they
would be in danger of drowning. The question is, how did the first
people get across safely, when there were no markers? Xunzi does not
address the question in precisely this way, but we can piece together
an answer from his writings.
Examining the analogies Xunzi uses is instructive here. He talks about
cultivating moral principles as a process of crafting, using the
metaphors of a potter shaping and firing clay into a pot, or using a
press-frame to straighten a bent piece of wood. Just as the skill of
making pottery was undoubtedly accumulated through generations of
refining, Xunzi appears to think that the Way of the sages was also a
product of generations of development. According to Xunzi's definition
of human nature, no one could say people know how to make pots by
nature: this is not something we can do without study and practice,
like walking and talking are. Nevertheless, some people, through a
combination of perseverance, talent, and luck, were able to discover
how to make pots, and then taught that skill to others. Similarly,
through generations of observing humanity and trying different ways of
regulating society, the sages hit upon the correct Way, the best way
to order society in Xunzi's view. David Nivison has suggested that
different sages of the past contributed different aspects of the Way:
some discovered agriculture, some discovered fire, some discovered the
principles of filiality and respect between husband and wife, and so
on.
Xunzi views these achievements as products of the sage's acquired
nature, not his original nature. This is another way of saying these
are not products of people's natural tendencies, but the results of
study and experimentation. Accumulation of effort is an important
concept for Xunzi. The Way of the sages was created through
accumulation of learning what worked and benefited society. The sages
built on the accomplishments of previous sages, added their own
contributions, and now Xunzi believes the process is basically
complete: we know the ritual principles that will produce a harmonious
society. Trying to govern or become a moral person without studying
the sages of the past is essentially trying to re-invent the wheel, or
discover how to make pots on one's own without learning from a potter.
It is conceivable (though Xunzi is very skeptical about anyone
actually being able to do it), but it is much more difficult and
time-consuming, when all one has to do is study what has already been
created.
e. 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.
Xunzi's philosophy of the heart draws from other contemporary views as
well as Confucian philosophy. Like Mencius, Xunzi believed that the
heart should be the lord of the body, and using the heart to direct
desires and decide on right and wrong accords with the Way. However,
like Zhuangzi, Xunzi emphasizes that the heart must be tranquil and
concentrated to be able to learn. In the view of the heart basically
shared by Xunzi and Mencius, desires are not wholly voluntary. Desires
are part of human nature, and can be activated without our necessarily
being conscious of them. The function of the heart is to regulate the
sense faculties and parts of the body, so that though one may have
desires, the heart only acts on those desires when it is right to do
so. The heart controls itself and directs the other parts of the body.
This ability of the heart is what allows humanity to create ritual and
moral principles and escape the state of nature.
In the chapter "Dispelling Blindness" Xunzi discusses the right way to
develop the heart to avoid falling into error. For study, the heart
needs to be trained to be receptive, focused, and calm. These
qualities of the heart allow it to know the Way, and knowing the Way,
the heart can realize the benefits of the Way and practice it. This
receptivity Xunzi calls emptiness, meaning the ability of the heart to
continually store new information without becoming full. Focus is
called unity, by which Xunzi means the ability to be aware of two
aspects of a thing or situation without allowing them to interfere
with each other. "Being of two hearts" was a common problem in Chinese
philosophical writings: it could mean being confused or perplexed
about something, as well as what we would call being two-faced. Xunzi
addresses the first aspect with his discussion of unity, a focus that
keeps the heart directed and free from perplexity. The final quality
the heart needs is stillness, the quality of moving freely from task
to task without disorder, remaining unperturbed while processing new
information. A heart that has the qualities of emptiness, unity, and
stillness can understand the Way. Without these qualities, the heart
is liable to fall into various kinds of "blindness" or obsessions that
Xunzi attributes to his philosophical rivals. Their hearts focus too
much on just one aspect of the Way, so they are unable to see the big
picture. They become obsessed with this one part and mistake it for
the entirety of the Way. Only with the proper attitudes and control of
one's heart can one perceive and grasp the Way as a whole.
4. Logic and Language
One subject that was certainly not part of Xunzi's program of study is
logic. Other philosophers, particularly the Mohist school, were
developing sophisticated views on logic and the principles of
argumentation around Xunzi's time, and other thinkers were known for
their paradoxes that played with language to show its limits. Though
Xunzi was undoubtedly influenced by the principles of argument
developed by the Mohists, he had no patience for the dialectical games
and disputation for its own sake that were popular at the time.
According to one story, a philosopher, having just convinced a king
through his arguments, then took the other side and persuaded the king
that his earlier arguments were wrong. Such exercises in argument and
rhetoric were a waste of time for Xunzi; the only correct use of
argument was to convince someone of the truth. Even the work of trying
to distinguish logical categories was not productive in his view.
According to Xunzi, such work can accomplish something, but it is
still not the province of the gentlemen, much as wondering about the
workings of nature are not the gentlemen's concern, either. The only
proper object of study is the Way of the sages; anything else is at
best useless and at worst detrimental to the Way.
Despite his professed disinterest in logic, Xunzi came up with the
most detailed philosophy of language in early Confucian thought.
Again, however, his primary concern was preserving the Way in the face
of attacks, which in Xunzi's view included questions about the nature
of language that were arising at the time. He defended a modified
conventionalism concerning language: names were not intrinsically
appropriate for the objects they referred to, but once usage was
determined by convention, to depart from it is wrong. It would be a
mistake to think of Xunzi's view as a kind of nominalism, however,
since he is very clear that there is an objective reality that names
refer to. The particular phonemes used to make the word "cat" in
language are conventionally determined, but the fact that a cat is a
kind of feline is real. One of the fundamental principles of
Confucianism was that the reality must match the name. Confucian
thinkers were most concerned about the names of social roles: a father
must act like a father should, a ruler must act like a ruler should.
Not fulfilling the demands of one's role means that one does not
deserve the title, hence Mencius defined the removal of a tyrant as
the killing of a commoner, not regicide. Xunzi defended this view, yet
he objected to the Mohists, who claimed that a robber is not a person,
so that killing a robber is not killing a person. This kind of usage
violated the principles of correct naming and departed from the Way,
though Xunzi is not entirely clear why. In Xunzi's view, the reality
represented by a name is objective, even if the name is merely
conventional. Because of the objectivity of referent, he distinguishes
appropriate (following convention) and inappropriate (violating
convention) uses of names. In addition, he believes there are good and
bad names. Good names are simple and direct and readily bring the
referent to mind. Using names in a way that the referents are clear is
using names correctly. The chief function of language is to
communicate, and anything that interferes with communication, such as
the word games and paradoxes of other philosophers, should be
eliminated.
5. Social and Political Thought
a. Government structure
The Warring States period, during which Xunzi lived, was a time of
great social change and instability. As the name implies, it was a
period of disunity, when several different states were warring with
each other to determine who would gain control of all of China and
found a new dynasty. Under the pressure of competition, the old ways
and political systems were being abandoned in the search for greater
control over human and material resources and increased military
power. The central question for most philosophers of the time was how
to respond to this time of instability and achieve a greater measure
of order and safety. For the Confucian philosophers, the answer was
found in a revival of the ways of the past, and for Xunzi in
particular, the most important aspect of that was the ritual system.
In this sense, the ethical and political aspects of Xunzi's philosophy
are the core areas, and in fact were not sharply distinguished in most
Confucian thought. Metaphysics and philosophy of language serve to
further the goal of restoring social stability.
All of the Warring States philosophers assumed that the government
should be a monarchy. The king was the ultimate authority in all areas
of government, having full power to hire and dismiss (and execute) any
other government official. There was no idea of democracy in early
China. The ruler could lose his state through failing in his duties as
a sovereign, but he could not be replaced at the whim of the people.
The political thinkers of the time instead tried to impose checks
through tradition and thought, rather than law. The Mohists made
Heaven the watchdog over the ruler: if a ruler offended Heaven by
mistreating the people, Heaven would have him removed through war or
revolt. The Confucians also emphasized the duties of the ruler to the
people, though in Xunzi's case there was no personified Heaven
watching over things. One of the functions of ritual was to try to put
limits on the power of the ruler and emphasize his obligation to the
people. Confucian thinkers, including Xunzi often viewed the state as
a family. 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.
b. Ritual and Music
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. Not
only will this result in order and stability, it actually will allow
for greater satisfaction of everyone's desires than the competition of
the state of nature. 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.
c. Moral Power
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 institution of the
hegemon existed briefly about three hundred years before Xunzi's time,
but he often uses the term to connote an effective ruler who is still
short of the highest level. 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.
This concept of moral power was quite old in China even in Xunzi's
time, though initially it referred to the power gained from the
spirits through sacrifice. 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. Following his example, the people
would become virtuous as well, so crime would be minimal, and the
ruler's subordinates could carry out the necessary administrative
tasks to run the state. 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. Confucius seemed to believe that the moral power of a sage
king would render laws and punishments completely unnecessary: the
people would be transformed by the ruler's moral power and never
transgress the boundaries of what is right. 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. This increased
acceptance of the necessity for punishments may have influenced
Xunzi's student Han Feizi, to whom is attributed the most developed
theory of government through a strict system of rewards and
punishments that was employed by the short-lived Qin dynasty.
6. References and Further Reading
* Cua, Antonio S. Ethical Argumentation: A Study in Hsün Tzu's
Moral Epistemology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.
* Dubs, Homer H. Hsüntze: Moulder of Ancient Confucianism. London:
Arthur Probsthain, 1927. The first English-language monograph on
Xunzi's thought.
* Goldin, Paul. Rituals of the Way. Chicago: Open Court, 1999. A
good overview of the essentials of Xunzi's thought.
* Ivanhoe, Philip J. Confucian Moral Self Cultivation.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000. An introduction to Confucian thought,
focusing on the theme of self cultivation. Includes a chapter on
Xunzi.
* Kline, T.C. III and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Virtue, Nature, and
Moral Agency in the Xunzi. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000. 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. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the
Complete Works, 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988,
1990, 1994. The only complete English translation of the Xunzi, with
extensive introductory material.
* Machle, Edward. Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the
Tian Lun. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. A translation and study of chapter
seventeen, "Discourse on Heaven."
* Watson, Burton, trans. Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1964. An excerpted translation, including
many of the more philosophically interesting chapters. It is easier
for non-specialists than Knoblock.
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