Was Xunzi a Confucian?

Was Xunzi a Confucian?

For most of imperial Chinese history, however, Xunzi was a bête noire who was typically cited as an example of a Confucian who went astray by rejecting Mencian convictions. Only in the last few decades has Xunzi been widely recognized as one of China’s greatest thinkers. 1. Xunzi and Xunzi 2. Human Nature ( xing 性) 3.

What does Xunzi mean by Unbridled competition?

In some passages, Xunzi attributes, in a manner superficially reminiscent of Hobbes or Rousseau, the genesis of the rituals to the sages’ recognition that unbridled competition produces a globally unsustainable situation: If people follow their desires, then boundaries cannot contain them and objects cannot satisfy them.

What does Xunzi mean by human nature is evil?

In Xunzi, “Human Nature is Evil” is framed as an argument with Mencius (who was probably long dead), and takes the view that the xing of human beings is the very opposite of shan, namely e.

How many editions of Xunzi are there?

All extant editions of Xunzi derive from a compilation by Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 BCE), a palace librarian who located 322 bamboo bundles of text ( pian 篇) that he confidently attributed to Xunzi, of which he eliminated 290 as duplicates.