Critical reflection / book review about Chinese philosophy - Essay Example

Mencius and Xunzi: Bastions of Chinese Philosophy Word Count 686 (6 pages) Mencius, first Ke was born in 371 B.C.E. in the principality of Tsau in the province of Shantung. He died in 289 B.C.E. Mencius was a greater thinker of the warring states period of Chinese history, whose influence was extremely important. Mencius was a Confucian disciple who later made major contributions to the spread of humanism in Confucian thought, and he was key proponent of Confucianism. There are lots of similarities between Confucius and himself: like Confucius, he was born in the Shantung province; and, also like Confucius, Mencius dedicated most of his life to teaching, which was imparted under the grandson of Confucius.

Like Confucius, he lived in a period of struggle, moral chaos, and intellectual conflict—a period known in China as the Spring and Autumn. Like Confucius, he had a similar sense of mission, if only to suppress what were called perversive doctrines. To this end he debated with scholars and attacked his opponents, especially the followers of Mo Tzu and Yang Chu. He was a filial son, and, after the death of his mother, he was out of office for three years. Mencius found roots in Confucian teachings and utilized many of the ideas and words Confucius did, believing that human nature (xing) is inherently good, and contains within it the potential to sprout into virtue.

Xunzi (313 B.C.E. – 238 B.C.E.) was known as Hsün-tzu or Xunkuang, born in the state of Zhou, in the period where states were warring with each other. Xunzi was a great ideologist, litterateur, politician and the representative of pre-Qin academics. He developed a new version of Confucianism which can be contrasted with that of the other great follower of Confucius. When he was fifty, he went to Chi, where a lot of famous scholars gathered around at that time, but he was the most outstanding one in them.

He held a different view of human nature than Mencius’s, who saw people as inherently good and governed by a moral sense. However, Xunzi held an opposite opinion, that people are born evil and disposed to act in evil ways when left to their own devices. Xunzi saw people as having an inherently evil nature that needed to be controlled by education and customs.  The confrontation between the two opposite doctrines—in which Menciuss theory of human nature is good, and Xunzis theory of humans nature is evil—is a pending case in Chinese history, without having shown any results favorably pointing in either direction.

Mencius believed that human nature was good, and advocated the virtue of the people; he inherited the Confucian form of philosophizing, embraced Neo-Confucianism, and made a lot of literal, sometimes what seemed to be absurd remarks. Differing with Mencius, Xunzi was opposed to his doctrine, insisting that human nature was evil. Thus, Xunzi advocated the use of rite or ritual to change human nature. Although both of their ideas about human nature were opposed, their purposes had the same orientation.

Although Mencius’s thinking on education is thus derived from his doctrine of natural goodness, he made significant progress in the central doctrine of the Confucian school, and his new theory flourished along with his other doctrines. While Confucius indicated that human nature is good, Mencius further improved upon his original idea that it was good. As Mencius said, "If you let people follow their feelings (original nature), they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

If man does evil, it is not the fault of his natural endowment.”1 Mencius believed that human nature is innate, and is not given by others nor is it a result of social practice; it is inherently inside of a human. Mencius’s comprehensive research of human nature—based on what we call moral property—was why he thought about the reason why humans differ from animals. He proffered that because humans are born both with moral consciousness and moral qualities, that animals did not fit into the same category.

In human nature—for example—we desire food and sex, but that does not define animals as having human nature. In order to refute Xunzi’s argument, Mencius postulates that the nature of an ox, for example, is not the nature of a man. So，one can view human nature as an internal basis of knowing the difference between the abilities of people and animals. Human nature, namely, moral consciousness and moral quality—are more specifically endowed with the feeling of commiseration [t]hat is what we call humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is what we call righteousness; and the feeling of respect and reverence is what we call propriety and the feeling of right and wrong is what we call wisdom.

The reason why human nature is good is because people inherently have the four sprouts, which are the potential forces of humanity, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, just as people have four limbs; we have them with us from birth. The reason human nature is good couldn’t be more natural, just like water naturally flows downward. But another well-known representative of the Confucian Xunzi, who held the opposite view to Mencius’s theory, declared his theory that the original evil nature of humans, or human nature, is evil, and he thought them to be evil human nature needing to be improved by both education and law.

There are two completely different theories that derived from Confucianism representing the two divergent tendencies of Xunzian thought. Human nature is a kind of natural property as he mentioned in his book, saying, ‘Now by nature man desires repletion when hungry, desires warmth when cold, and desires rest when tired’; it’s man’s natural feeling.2 But resources are limited in the real world, and people have endless desires for limited resources; therefore, they must start to get resources for their own sake, leading to all kinds of power struggle and intrigues, even provoking murder.

Society will fall into a state of chaos if we indulge human nature and do nothing positive with it. Thus, Xunzi made a conclusion that human nature is bad, based on these features of human nature. If human nature is bad and not restrained by cultivation (or socialization) and education, it will lead society to fall into a state of chaos and even cause the end of mankind. But why is it not the end of mankind? This implies that the way to establish a stable society in harmony with secure social order are law and education, by which one can learn to distinguish right from wrong.

After all, “Hsün Tzu stood diametrically opposed to Mencius whose doctrine professed the original goodness of human nature and moral intuition as the source of political and social development.”3 Xunzi emphasizes the origin of goodness; he thought any goodness was the result of man, who acquired ideological and moral cultivation called wei. So, sages lay down strict doctrine of rite in order maintain social order and human development. A man should respect his elders. When he’s tired, he should take over the work of his elders.

One should take over work for one’s brother or father. These are all similar ideals which are kinds of action contrary to the original, evil nature and violate tendencies to feel inadequacy or envy. Those cases are the result of acquired education and self-cultivation, the result of wei, what can turn human nature into goodness. Although they hold two opposite view of human nature, Mencius and Xunzi both emphasized the importance of maintaining social order and establishing harmony within society.

They also emphasized the fact that human nature can be improved and acquired over time with ritual, education and self-cultivation, the way to maintain a good social order and establish harmonious social development. In Mencius’s theory of human nature being good, he mentioned the four sprouts in human nature, which are: humanity, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, the four beginnings in human nature. The proper ways to get good results from these four sprouts are fostered through ritual and political methods, otherwise these four spouts will end up in in chaos, ultimately producing a tumultuous world.

Similar to Mencius, Xunzis claim that human nature is inherently evil shaped his suggestions about how human beings can achieve sagely wisdom, in that evil human nature needs to be constrained by rite and education. So, in reality, the way to obtain good human nature can be through overcoming those evil impulses which exist within human nature. Xunzi once said that ritual and education are the result of human struggle with the “evil” nature. In other words, ritual and education show people how to follow rules, and result in the fact that following rules is the way which helps one become that much closer to becoming knowledgeable in terms of sagely wisdom.

Critically speaking, the reason why these two great scholars—Mencius and Xunzi—held two opposite views about human nature is because they defined human nature in different scopes. Mencius thought the human being owned ‘four sprouts’ inherently, these ‘four sprouts’ being the roots of human nature which separates human beings from animals. He gave the definition of innate natural goodness in human nature which he derived from peoples’ moral properties. On the other hand, Xunzi did involve desire and instinct in human nature, giving an ultimately opposing definition derived from humans’ natural properties.

These philosophers came to different conclusions that Mencius thought human nature was good, while Xunzi declared human nature inherently bad. The two different theories are like the two sides of the same coin; they do not contradict each other, but support each other in a dualistic fashion. Furthermore, the purpose of these two scholars’ theories are in fact one and the same: using an acquired method to improve the weakness of human nature in order to establish harmony in society and maintain a stable social order.

Mencius and Xunzi came from different perspectives to define human nature since they used different ways to govern people and provinces. Ultimately, their great contributions to Chinese philosophy cannot be overlooked, and indeed should still be debated today. WORKS CITEDChan, Wing-Tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Pp. 54, 121, 129.