Xunzi (荀子) is is one of the major Confucian philosophers. He is famous for his idea that human nature is bad. This is in contrast to Mencius, another Confucian philosopher, who claims the human nature is good. But although these philosophers seem very different in their diagnoses, their recommendations are quite similar. For Mencius, if human nature is good, the big question is how we become bad. What are the things that turn our good natures towards badness. And here he has a lot to say about political factors, environmental factors, and questions of poverty and oppression. In contrast, Xunzi faces another question. If human nature is bad, then the big challenge is to explain how we can become good. Xunzi talks about a craft of goodness, using metaphors like carpentry to describe how we can take the raw materials of our bad natures, and make them good.
And in this process of sustaining our good natures, or overcoming our bad natures, the practice of virtue has a role to play. And for Xunzi, there are in particular two things that help develop and sustain our virtue. The first is education, and the existence of good exemplars. And the second is ritual. By ritual Xunzi means how we go about arranging our lives, arranging our social interactions, how we move, how we speak, how we interrelate, how we celebrate together, how we mourn together, how we dress—in fact all those aspects of our shared cultural life that express particular virtues. We act out these virtues through ritual, and in acting them out they become real.
Let’s talk about how education and ritual can sustain virtue. First, let’s look at education. Here, as there is less explicitly on education in the text you read, we’ll just turn to our own experience.
Discussion questions
-
Do you think education should make us not just smarter, but more virtuous?
-
What does Parami claim about making us more virtuous?
-
Are these claims credible? Or is there evidence for them?
-
Are you more virtuous (😂) since starting at Parami. Or has it made you more evil?
We’ll feed back after the group.
Ritual
Ritual is another way of developing virtue. It gives us a framework (Xunzi talks about using a frame to shape the raw wood) so that we can
Think about the rituals that you engage in (either formal, religious rituals, or simple things like table manners, or how you might buy somebody a cup of tea in a tea-house) that help sustain virtue. What are these rituals, and how do they sustain virtue?
Post to the discussion board.