Xunzi (born c. 300, Zhao kingdom, China—died c. 230 bce, Lanling, Chu kingdom, China) was a philosopher who was one of the three great Confucian philosophers of the classical period in China. He elaborated and systematized the work undertaken by Confucius and Mencius, giving a cohesiveness, comprehensiveness, and direction to Confucian thought that was all the more compelling for the rigor with which he set it forth; and the strength he thereby gave to that philosophy has been largely responsible for its continuance as a living tradition for over 2,000 years. Many of his diverse intellectual achievements came to be obscured as later Confucians focused on the misanthropic view attributed to him that human nature is basically ugly or evil, and, beginning about the 12th century ce, his writings fell into a period of disfavor and neglect from which they have only recently reemerged.
His original name was Xun Kuang, but he is commonly referred to as Xunzi (Master Xun), zi being an honorary suffix attached to the names of many philosophers. The exact dates of Xunzi’s life and career are uncertain. Little is known of his life save that he was a native of the state of Zhao (in modern Shanxi Province, north-central China), that he belonged for some years to the Zhixia academy of philosophers maintained in Qi by the ruler of that eastern state, and that, later, because of slander, he moved south to the state of Chu, where he became magistrate of a small district in 255 bce and later died in retirement.
Xunzi’s importance in the development of Confucian philosophy rests on the historical influence of his major work, known today as the Xunzi. This book comprises 32 chapters, or essays, and is regarded as being in large part from his own hand, uncorrupted by later emendations or forgeries. The Xunzi essays are a milestone in the development of Chinese philosophy. The anecdotal and epigrammatic style that had characterized earlier philosophical literature—i.e., the Analects, Tao-te Ching, Mencius, Zhuangzi—no longer sufficed to convey fully and persuasively the complex philosophical disputes of Xunzi’s day. Xunzi was the first great Confucian philosopher to express his ideas not merely by means of the sayings and conversations recorded by disciples but also in the form of well-organized essays written by himself. In his book he introduced a more rigorous writing style that emphasized topical development, sustained reasoning, detail, and clarity.
Xunzi’s most famous dictum is that “the nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired training.” What Xunzi preached was thus essentially a philosophy of culture. Human nature at birth, he maintained, consists of instinctual drives which, left to themselves, are selfish, anarchic, and antisocial. Society as a whole, however, exerts a civilizing influence upon the individual, gradually training and molding him until he becomes a disciplined and morally conscious human being. Of prime importance in this process are the li (ceremonies and ritual practices, rules of social behavior, traditional customs) and music (which Xunzi, like Plato, regarded as having a profound moral significance).
Xunzi’s view of human nature was, of course, radically opposed to that of Mencius, who had optimistically proclaimed the innate goodness of man. Both thinkers agreed that all men are potentially capable of becoming sages, but for Mencius this meant that every man has it within his power to develop further the shoots of goodness already present at birth, whereas for Xunzi it meant that every man can learn from society how to overcome his initially antisocial impulses. Thus began what became one of the major controversies in Confucian thought.
The difference between Mencius and Xunzi is metaphysical as well as ethical. Tian (heaven) for Mencius, though not an anthropomorphic deity, constituted an all-embracing ethical power; therefore it is inevitable that man’s nature should be good, since he receives it from heaven at birth. For Xunzi, on the other hand, tian embodied no ethical principle and was simply the name for the functioning activities of the universe (somewhat like our word Nature). These activities he conceived of naturalistically and almost mechanistically. Moral standards, therefore, have no metaphysical justification but are man-made creations.
One may ask how, if man is born “evil” (by which Xunzi really meant uncivilized), it is possible for him to create the higher values of civilization. In the essay “A Discussion of Ritual,” Xunzi attempts to answer this question and in the process elaborates the concept central to his entire philosophy. Xunzi asserts that man differs from other creatures in one vital respect: besides his instinctual drives, he also possesses an intelligence which enables him to form cooperative social organizations. Hence the sages, realizing that man cannot well survive in a state of anarchy, used this intelligence to formulate the social distinctions and rules of social behavior which would check the encroachments of one individual upon another and thereby ensure sufficiency for all. Xunzi thus presents a believable utilitarian explanation for the creation of social institutions.
The li constituted the “Way” of Confucianism as interpreted by Xunzi, being the ritualized norms governing the mores, manners, and morals of the people. Originally the behavioral expressions of early supernatural beliefs, the historical li were being abandoned by an increasingly agnostic intelligentsia during Xunzi’s own era, the Warring States period, a time of great change and instability. Xunzi had a sophisticated appreciation of the manifold advantages in areas such as trade, social mobility, and technology that were accompanying the breakdown of the feudal order during the Warring States period. At the same time, he could see that these societal transformations were also bringing to the Chinese the demise of their ancient socio-religious institutions, and he believed that the ritual practices (li) linked with those institutions were too important to be lost during secularization. For him, those ritual practices were important to the society because they were a culturally binding force for a people whose existence depended on cooperative economic efforts, and further, those ritual practices were important to the individual because they provided an aesthetic and spiritual dimension to the lives of the practitioners. By his fundamental insistence on the necessity of cultural continuity for both the physical and psychological well-being of his fellows, Xunzi placed himself squarely in the ranks of Confucian philosophers and provided an ethical and aesthetic philosophical basis for these ritual practices as their religious foundation was weakening.
The li are the basic stuff out of which Xunzi builds the ideal society as described in his book, and the scholar-officials who are to govern that society have as their primary function the preservation and transmission of these ritual practices. Like all early Confucians, Xunzi was opposed to hereditary privilege, advocating literacy and moral worth as the determinants of leadership positions, rather than birth or wealth; and these determinants were to have as their foundation a demonstrated knowledge of the high cultural tradition—the li. No less significant politically than socially, the li were to be employed by scholars to ensure that everyone was in a place, and officials were to employ the li to ensure that there was a place for everyone.
Xunzi’s primary concern was with social philosophy and ethics, as evidenced by the content of his essays: 18 of the 32 fall solely within these areas, and the remainder fall partly so. Even the technical, linguistically oriented “Rectification of Names” is liberally sprinkled with comments about the adverse social consequences attending the abuse and misuse of language. Among his other famous essays, “A Discussion of Music” became the classic work on the subject in China. Here, too, social issues are under consideration as Xunzi discusses the importance of music as a vehicle for expressing human emotions without generating interpersonal conflict.
Another celebrated essay is “A Discussion of Heaven,” in which he attacks superstitious and supernatural beliefs. One of the work’s main themes is that unusual natural phenomena (eclipses, etc.) are no less natural for their irregularity—hence are not evil omens—and therefore men should not be concerned at their occurrence. Xunzi’s denial of supernaturalism led him into a sophisticated interpretation of popular religious observances and superstitions. He asserted that these were merely poetic fictions, useful for the common people because they provided an orderly outlet for human emotions, but not to be taken as true by educated men. There Xunzi inaugurated a rationalistic trend in Confucianism that has been congenial to scientific thinking.
Xunzi also made important contributions to psychology, semantics, education, logic, epistemology, and dialectic. Yet his primary interest in dialectic was as a tool for exposing the “fallacies” of rival schools, and he bitterly lamented the need for dialectic in the absence of a centralized political authority that could impose ideological unity from above. Xunzi, indeed, was an authoritarian who formed a logical link between Confucianism and the totalitarian Legalists; it is no accident that among his students were two of the most famous Legalists, the theoretician Han Feizi (c. 280–233 bce) and the statesman Li Si (c. 280–208 bce). Both of these men earned the enmity of later Confucian historians, and the opprobrium they have consistently received through the centuries has also negatively affected the evaluation of their teacher. Xunzi’s writings were no less the recipient of moral disapproval than his teaching, owing in large measure to the often-quoted essay “Man’s Nature Is Evil.” Because Mencius believed that human beings were innately disposed toward moral behaviour, Xunzi was perceived, as the author of this essay, to be attacking his illustrious predecessor. The truth is that Xunzi remained Confucian in his firm rejection of the amoral philosophy and compulsive techniques of the Legalists, and in his insistence on Confucian morality as the basis for society.
For several centuries after Xunzi’s death, his influence remained greater than that of Mencius. Only with the rise of neo-Confucianism in the 10th century ce did his influence begin to wane, and not until the 12th century was the triumph of Mencius formalized by the inclusion of the Mencius among the Confucian classics and by Mencius’ canonization as the second Sage of Confucianism. Xunzi was declared heterodox.
Xunzi’s model society was never put into practice, and, like Confucius and Mencius before him, he probably died believing himself to have been a failure. Yet the rationalism, religious skepticism, concern for man in society, historical and cultural sensitivity, and fondness for ancient lore and customs that pervade his writings also pervaded Chinese intellectual life for more than two millennia. No one dealt with these issues more thoroughly than Xunzi, and his passionate defense of the Confucian moral vision contributed substantively to lessening the distance between the philosophical ideal and the historical reality. He has been correctly described as the molder of ancient Confucianism. Traditional China, with its extensive lands and huge population, came to be largely a Confucian state—making Xunzi one of the most influential philosophers the world has ever known.