China & East Asia · c. 310–235 BCE
Xunzi
Confucian realist who held human nature to be bad
Human nature left to itself leads to strife; goodness is the product of deliberate effort (wei) through ritual and learning, as a warped board is straightened by steaming and bending.
Life and thought
Xun Kuang was born in Zhao, probably around 310 BCE. He studied and taught at the Jixia academy in Qi, where Sima Qian says he was three times its senior master, and later served as magistrate of Lanling in Chu under Lord Chunshen, still alive after 238 BCE. Among his students were Han Fei and Li Si, the minister who helped the First Emperor unify China, and their fame later damaged his own.
Against Mencius he argued that human nature is bad: we are born wanting gain, envying others and craving pleasure, and if we simply follow these impulses the result is strife. Goodness is the product of deliberate effort (wei). The sage kings devised ritual and rightness to shape and satisfy desires, as a warped board is straightened by steaming or metal sharpened on a whetstone. Heaven is no moral judge but a constant natural order: “it does not persist for the sake of Yao, nor perish for the sake of Jie”. His Confucianism dominated Han scholarship before later tradition preferred Mencius.
Works
Shaped by
551–479 BCE (traditional)ConfuciusTeacher from Lu who sought to revive the Zhou wayStudents
c. 280–233 BCEHan FeiziPrince of Han who synthesised Legalist thoughtShaped
c. 179–104 BCEDong ZhongshuHan scholar who helped make Confucianism the state learningArgued against
c. 372–289 BCEMenciusXunzi wrote a chapter titled “Human Nature Is Bad” directly against Mencius.Meanwhile, in other traditions
c. 371–287 BCETheophrastusAristotle’s successor at the Lyceum and founder of botanyc. 360–270 BCEPyrrhoFounder of Pyrrhonian skepticism, who went to India with Alexander341–270 BCEEpicurusFounder of the Garden, a philosophical community near Athensc. 334–262 BCEZeno of CitiumMerchant from Cyprus who founded Stoicism in Athensc. 279–206 BCEChrysippusThird head of the Stoa, its great systematiser and logicianc. 3rd–2nd c. BCE (traditional)JaiminiTraditional author of the Mīmāṃsā SūtraOn the record
Xunzi taught Han Fei, and his “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter argues against Mencius.
Han Fei (d. 233 BCE) and Li Si (d. 208 BCE) are recorded among Xunzi’s former students. The “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter is framed as an argument with Mencius, who was probably long dead; its title may not be Xunzi’s own.