1. Chinese Philosophers Xunzi
Instructor: Ellie Hua Wang
11/2/2018

2. Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi

3. Xunzi’s naturalistic view of heaven
Xunzi’s naturalism: the simplified view that the only things that exist are natural or physical things and that philosophical inquiry should be backed by empirical investigation.
Heaven-human relation:
supreme anthropomorphic deity (Shang) Heaven has the supreme spiritual reality (Chou)  A moral heaven, a strong correspondence between heaven and man (Confucius and Mencius)  heaven is the totality of natural phenomena with lawful regularities, independent of human world and human cognition. (Xunzi 17.1: “Heaven’s ways are constant. It does not prevail because of a sage like Yao. It does not cease to prevail because of a tyrant like Jie.”)

4. Xunzi’s naturalistic view of heaven
Fear to marvel  rational investigation of nature
Liu 89: “Xunzi does not therefore think that we should only be concerned with human affairs and pay no attention to the working of Heaven. What we need to study is the operations of Heaven in their own right.”  so to prepare and react properly.
The constancy can be empirically observed through our senses.
The heavenly faculties (sense organs – to perceive, to detect the taxonomies or natural objects)
The heavenly ruler (mind – to understand: employ data collected by sensory organs and make its own distinctions, form concepts)

5. Xunzi’s naturalistic view of heaven
Against irrational beliefs or superstitious practices, e.g., seeing ghost
Rituals, religious ceremonies and practices serve a human function:
Stress the gravity of the affair
Express emotions and attitudes (e.g., respect)
Demonstrate how much one cares and one’s respect  teach the common people the right attitude
Indispensible
Chan: “… [S]acrifices are ‘ornaments,’ or refined manifestation of an inner attitude.” (What’s missing in this characterization?)

6. On Human Nature Confucius
Mencius – natural tendency is good, the 4 sprouts
Gaozi – life, basic dispositions
Xunzi – what is given, innate, not learned. human nature is bad; his goodness is the result of man’s deliberate effort.

7. Xunzi On Human Nature
Human nature: whatever one is born with; whatever comes naturally and not from one’s doing; whatever one received from heaven – no teleological design, no moral correspondence, including emotions, desires, etc. Human naturally like enjoyment and profit.
Goodness: order and harmony; evil: chaos and violence
Human nature is bad because it naturally leads to an evil state.

8. Human nature (性) and Deliberate Effort (偽)
nature （性）: whatever is given by heaven, natural attributes
wei （偽）: whatever is mixed with human effort, artificial/cultural attributes
p.95 Lau
Xunzi ch23 (Liu 94-95)
“human nature is what humans share with other animals, while human goodness is what humans develop out of a long process of civilization. Therefore, it is human being’s deliberate effort, rather than human nature, that distinguishes humans from other animals.” (95) (How about the potential or prerequisite capacity to make effort? Ch23, p.99)

9. X’s Arguments against M
Sweeping empirical claim?
Hobbes: human egoistic nature + the variability of human desires + the need for scarce resources to fulfill those desires  the state of nature: a war of all against all
"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Leviathan)

10. X’s Arguments against M
II. Degree of lacking
III. What is nature is what cannot be learned
IV. Premise 4? Off target?

11. The Seed of Morality?
The potential to learn and transform morally (Liu 99)
＝ Mencius’ seed of morality?
Liu: intellectual capacity vs. moral capacity (natural tendency?) What is the difference?
Another explanation? Schwartz: “The word … ‘capacity’ does not refer to an immediately available ‘intuitive’ knowledge. (?) It is a capacity for acquiring experience and reasoning about experience and it demands constant cumulative acts of mental exertion.”
One needs to learn, with the right goal, and persistence and concentration in one’s attitude.

12. Xunzi on yi義
Yi: make social distinctions – a species ability, an important characteristic of humans
It is yi that enables social distinctions, adopting and applying social principles that would allow for the hierarchical structuring of society where everything requires its proper place, and resulting in he和, concord or harmony. This in turn ultimately leads to oneness or unity yi一.

13. The necessity of external restraints
X’s Argument against M VII
Hobbes’ solution: social contract, strong government
What is the difference between Xunzi and Hobbes’ views of human nature and their solutions?

14. Moral cultivation: a process from the outside in
Mencius’s view of moral cultivation
Xunzi: Teachers, classical texts, rituals, and music become the instruments that shape the person’s moral sense form the outside.
Li as inner control (proper mental attitudes) (Confucius? Mencius) vs. external control (Xunzi)

15. Xunzi vs. Mencius
Chong/Xunzi: Mencius assumes a state of nature wherein human beings have moral resources that they can voluntarily call upon at any time. Xunzi denies the application of this organic construal of the ability to act morally. Rather, becoming a sage requires: - There is a rationale to morality to be learned - possessing the cognitive and instrumental capacities that allows one to learn this rationale - having the character to voluntarily work on the capacities

16. Character change
Chong 72: the ignoble person has the capacity to be a noble person, but does not want to be one. Similarly, the noble person was the capacity to be an ignoble person, but does not want to be one. In other words, each can be (like) the other, but cannot be forced to do so.

17. The seed of morality?
If the sages were able to transform themselves and institute moral processes, does this not admit that there were certain resources that they could use in the first place, and in this sense, does it not mean that human nature is good?
Consider the analogy: the potter molds clay to a dish. (any problem with this view?)
Do you think being moral requires effortful learning? Why?

18. Xunzi vs. Mencius
Constitutive processes are not just regulatory; they transform raw capacities into refined sensibilities, feelings and emotions. Mencius’ underlying belief in a simple organic state is therefore insufficient to account for the nature of morality, described in terms of the constitutive rationale of the rites (Cua: ennobling). (Chong 68-9)
If unregulated and uncultivated, the desires of people would lead to wrangling and social disorder, resulting in a very incommodious situation for all. (is the rationale for social control?)

19. The significance of rituals
The rules are regulatory and constitutive. Constitutive rules create or define new forms of behavior. In other words, such behavior would not exist without the rules that give rise to them, as opposed to natural activity such as eating. Xunzi’s account spells out the constitutive processes whereby both the society and the individual are culturally transformed from a raw to a cultivated state. From this perspective, it is part of Xunzi’s argument that Mencius has ignored the socially constitutive processes that are necessary for any individual to become a moral agent. (Chong 75-6)

20. Xunzi and Mencius
Chong 79: according to Xunzi’s diagnosis, Mencius assumes a simple state where, so it seems, having the necessary capacity to know and act on the rationale of morality organically translates into an ability to act morally.

21. Xunzi and Mencius
Chong 79: Xunzi’s remedy consists in specifying the ritual processes in giving rise to a sense of morality. He spells out what “morality” is in terms of a social and political hierarchy, proper relationships, reverence for various forms of authority, and a sense of rootedness and order. In addition, there is the transformative influence of aesthetic devices that give rise to individual and social refinement, harmony and cultural form. All these things do not come raw but have to be cultivated.

22. The significance of rituals
Invented by sages
The dilemma of the early sages: how did the first sage come about?
One proposal: kings, not sage; moral rules are for pragmatic need of social control
kings become sages themselves by following moral guidance and eventually appreciating the beauty of morality itself.
The function of moral teachings and societal rituals is to rectify and transform one’s original nature. (the human function)

23. Change in character
The qualities of a person can be changed through accumulated effort, custom, and habituation.
Comprehensive knowledge:
Comprehensiveness means that one learns the rationale of the ritual principles so that “they will come to dwell within him”, and such that his sensory organs would have an aversion toward whatever is contrary to them and come to delight in whatever are in accordance with them. (1.14) This completeness of knowledge and internalization of ritual principles means that one does not think simply in terms of benefit, happiness, and the preservation of life. To preserve them is to act in a principled way that sometimes involves, say, being prepared to die.

24. Gaozi on Human Nature
Human nature is more like a blank slate (tree vs. wooden cups, 6A:1). Human nature itself is indifferent to good and evil. (water analogy, 6A:2, no violation; natural tendency)
The word ‘nature’ simply means ‘life’, ‘what is inborn’. 生之 謂性 (6A:3) (Chong 39, 食色性也 6A:4；性無善無不善 6A:6, begging the question)
Desire for food and sex are natural to us. They define our nature. Moral virtues such as yi (ren is internal) are manufactured by human efforts (imposed on us externally, from the outside). (6A:4, 5)

25. Discussion
It seems that both Gaozi and Xunzi understand human nature as what one is born with. They also both use artifacts (wooden cups and bowls; earthenware dish) as metaphors for the result of moral education. Please specify the similarity and the difference, if any, between their views of human nature?

26. For Next Time Read assigned material
8 LiCareEthic.pdf (title: The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of care: A comparative Study)
(optional) 8 Star on Confucian and care ethics.pdf
(optional) Li reply to Star.pdf
8 whose-democracy-which-rights-a-confucian-critique-of-modern-western- liberalism.pdf
Raise 2 thoughtful questions about the material and send them to our assistant, Jeanie due next Thursday at 5pm.