Abstract
One of the most contested issues in the interpretation of Xunzi is how his theory of morality answers metaethical questions. What is the nature and origin of morality? Do human beings construct it, or does it exist independently of them? What is the relation of morality to the natural world and whatever might have created or imparted order to that world? Is there a single true or correct morality or a plurality of such moralities? It will be argued that interpretations attributing apparently different metaethical positions to Xunzi can in fact agree on some important elements that should go into any plausible interpretation of Xunzi. Furthermore, this essay defends the possibility that, contrary to what some interpreters have thought, Xunzi could simultaneously be both a constructivist and an absolutist in his metaethics. Nevertheless, the conclusion here is that the Xunzi yields no unambiguous metaethical theory. There are at least three reasons for this inconclusiveness. First, Xunzi’s main concerns were not to answer metaethical questions. Second, the synthetic and original nature of his theorizing makes it difficult to pin him down. And third, there is significant looseness and variability in the meaning of the terms with which we ourselves formulate the metaethical questions, terms such as ‘constructivism,’ ‘realism,’ ‘relativism,’ and ‘absolutism.’
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
There are significantly different forms of constructivism. “Kantian constructivism” is a group of views that have in common the idea that moral truths come from the exercise of rational agency and not from moral facts or properties that exist independently of such agency. John Rawls was the first to define this kind of view and to attribute it to Kant himself (see Rawls 1980). Contemporary philosophers classified as Kantian constructivists include Christine Korsgaard (1996) and Onora O’Neill (1989). Humean constructivists, such as Bagnoli (2002) and Street (2008), highlight the individual’s sentiments and interests as the source of moral truths. Social constructivists, such as Copp (1995), Harman (1975), and Wong (2006, 2008), emphasize that morality serves the function (though more than one function may be attributed to morality, as in Wong 2006) of promoting social cooperation. Those who see Xunzi as a constructivist tend towards the social constructivist kind, though rational agency and sentiments and interests may also play a role in their interpretations of Xunzi’s metaethics.
- 2.
Just as there is a significantly wide variety of views encompassed by the term ‘constructivism’ in metaethics, so there is by the term ‘realism.’ The definition given here is quite common (see Boyd 1988; Brink 1989; Shafer-Landau 2005; Sturgeon 1985), but other prominent definitions have been more capacious, encompassing all metaethical views that hold in the existence of moral truths, whether are not these truths are dependent on human conceptual representation or not (see Sayre-McCord 1991 for the most prominent example of this alternative definition). The more restrictive definition is adopted here so as to provide a more convenient contrast with constructivism, but on the more capacious construal of realism, constructivism would be a subspecies of realism. For helpful general discussions of constructivism and realism in ethics, see Bagnoli 2011 and Sayre-McCord 2005, both in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- 3.
[Editor’s note] Readers are strongly encouraged to compare David Wong’s analysis of these matters with the discussion given by Chris Fraser in his contribution to this volume.
- 4.
As indicated in note 1, constructivists can hold significantly different metaethical commitments. In particular, Kantian constructivists, in contrast to Humean and social constructivists, are committed to the idea that rationality can by itself yield moral truths. Some critics of Kantian constructivism hold that Kant’s theory is ultimately realist because its derivation of the Categorical Imperative appeals to the absolute value of humanity (e.g., Wood 1999, 157, 114; Langton 2007). Critics of Korsgaard’s Kantian constructivism have developed this sort of argument against her use of human identity as a source of moral reasons (e.g., Crisp 2006, 52–55), to argue that she must implicitly rely on a form of realism. Some moral realists argue that some social constructivists should view themselves as realists in the sense of ‘realism’ assumed in this essay (see Bloomfield and Daniel Massey 2014, Kindle location 2601–2743, for a critique of Wong 2006 on what they see to be his mistaken failure to embrace realism, given the sort of social constructivism he holds, and see Wong’s reply to them, 2014, Kindle location 4959–5001). Wong (2006, xi–xii) has criticized the field of metaethics for failure to recognize the vast middle ground between absolutism as usually defined (the view that there is a single true morality) and relativism as usually defined (that any morality is as true as any other), and points out that there may be no single true morality, a plurality of true moralities, and many false moralities.
- 5.
I owe consideration of this possibility to Eric Hutton.
- 6.
These are Eric Hutton’s reasons for translating tian as “Heaven.”
- 7.
Paul Goldin can be taken to lean in something like this interpretive direction, though he construes Xunzi’s tian more along the lines of Deism, a deity that does not intervene in human affairs but simply sets up the operations of the world according to patterns that the Way embodies. See his chapter on Xunzi in Goldin (2011, 2014).
- 8.
Hansen’s interpretation of Xunzi as a conventionalist is complicated by his seeing Xunzi as a dogmatic Confucian in the end, but he sees Xunzi as making a pragmatic decision simply to ignore alternative, non-Confucian ways of parsing the world and the corresponding sets of names, on the grounds that social order would be threatened by the recognition of equally justifiable alternatives.
- 9.
Yearley , it must be noted, sees both a realist/absolutist and a constructivist/relativist strain in Xunzi, but he sees the former as less basic and appearing in “exoteric writings aimed to affect the unsophisticated” (Yearley 1980: 476).
- 10.
From personal communication with Hutton.
- 11.
- 12.
Interestingly, Yearley is tempted to describe Xunzi as a utilitarian of some sort, though he does not do so officially because of the widely varying meanings of ‘utilitarianism.’ See Yearley 1980: 476n13. This would prompt me to question in what sense Yearley takes Xunzi to be a relativist or whether he really wants to call Xunzi a utilitarian .
- 13.
In chapter 6, Mengzi and Zisi are associated with the doctrine of Wuxing 五行 (“Five Conducts”). As Eric Hutton has pointed out to me, this might be a reference to the Wuxing texts from Mawangdui and Guodian , in which the five conducts are ren , righteousness, rituals, wisdom, and sageliness (sheng 聖). Therefore Xunzi might have thought that Zisi and Mengzi assigned incorrect content to one or more of these values. This is all pretty speculative, though, and what Xunzi says in criticism is not indicative of the specific nature of the disagreement. Finally, even if the Wuxing Xunzi mentions are the aforementioned texts, and even if he actually disagrees with the content assigned to one or more of the conducts mentioned in these texts, this is still compatible with allowing a permissible range of variation in the content of Confucian values. But Xunzi might have been focusing on what he regarded as errors in the way these values are theoretically grounded by Zisi and Mengzi , rather than primarily the content of the values.
Bibliography
Bagnoli, Carla. 2002. “Moral Constructivism: A Phenomenological Argument.” Topoi 21: 125–38. (A Humean form of constructivism.)
Bagnoli, Carla. 2011. “Constructivism in Metaethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructivism-metaethics/#KanCon . (A survey of various types of constructivist positions.)
Bloom, Irene. 2009. Mencius. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bloomfield, Paul, and Daniel Massey. 2014. “The Metaphysics and Semantics of Moral Relativism.” In Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy: David Wong and his Critics, ed. Yang Xiao and Yong Huang. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Kindle edition. (Combined with Wong 2014, this provides an example of the way that metaethicists can disagree on whether to call a theory realist or not.)
Boyd, Richard. 1988. “How to Be a Moral Realist.” In Essays on Moral Realism, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (A defense of representation-independent moral realism.)
Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A defense of representation-independent moral realism.)
Cheung, Leo K.C. 2001. “The Way of the Xunzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 28 (3): 301–20.
Copp, David. 1995. Morality, Normativity, and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Crisp, Roger. 2006. Reasons and the Good, New York: Oxford University Press.
Cua, Antonio S. 2005. “Philosophy of Human Nature.” In Human Nature, Ritual, and History. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of American Press.
Eno, Robert. 1990. The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Frank, Robert H. 2001. “Cooperation through Emotional Commitment.” In Evolution and the Capacity for Commitment, ed. Randolph M. Nesse. New York: Russell Sage.
Goldin, Paul Rakita. 1999. Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi. Chicago: Open Court.
Goldin, Paul Rakita. 2011. 2014. Confucianism. First published in 2011 by Acumen. Published in 2014 in New York: Routledge.
Goldman, Alan. 1988. Moral Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Hagen, Kurtis. 2007a. The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction. Chicago: Open Court.
Hagen, Kurtis. 2007b. “A Response to Eric Hutton’s Review.” Dao 6: 441–43.
Hansen, Chad. 1992. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harman, Gilbert. 1975. “Moral Relativism Defended.” Philosophical Review 84(1): 3–22.
Hutton, Eric L. 2000. “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature?” In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, ed. T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Hutton, Eric L. 2007a. Review of Hagen, Kurtis, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction. Dao 6: 417–421.
Hutton, Eric L. 2007b. “A Further Response to Kurtis Hagen.” Dao 6: 445–46.
Hutton, Eric L. 2014. Xunzi: The Complete Text, Translated and with an Introduction by Eric L. Hutton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Though the author of this chapter wrote the bulk of this chapter before the translation became available to him, it is highly recommended and deserves to become the new standard for Xunzi scholars working with an English translation.)
Ivanhoe, Philip J. 1991. “A Happy Symmetry: Xunzi’s Ethical Philosophy.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59: 309–22.
Kavka, Gregory. 1986. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kline III, T.C. 2000. “Moral Agency and Motivation in the Xunzi.” In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, ed. T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A contemporary form of Kantian constructivism.)
Langton, Rae. 2007. “Objective and Unconditioned Value.” Philosophical Review 116: 157–85.
Lee, Janghee. 2005. Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Machle, Edward J. 1993. Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the Tian Lun. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Nagel, Thomas. “Hobbes on Obligation,” Philosophical Review 68: 68–83.
Nivison, David S. 1991. “Hsün Tzu and Chuang Tzu.” In Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, ed. Henry Rosemont, Jr. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Reprinted in 2000 as “Xunzi and Zhuangzi.” In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, ed. T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Nivison, David S. 1996. “Hsün Tzu on ‘Human Nature’.” In The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden. Chicago: Open Court, 1996.
O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A contemporary form of Kantian constructivism.)
Puett, Michael J. 2001. The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1980. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” Journal of Philosophy 77: 515–72. (The most influential construal of Kant as a kind of constructivist.)
Sato, Masayuki 佐藤將之. 2003. The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. Leiden: Brill.
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. 1991. “Being a Realist About Relativism (in Ethics).” Philosophical Studies 61: 155–76. (Defends a conception of moral realism that includes all theories attributing truth values to moral judgments.)
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. 2005 (rev. 2015). “Moral Realism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/. (Survey of the the contemporary moral realism literature.)
Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2005. Moral Realism: A Defense. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Contains a more restrictive definition of moral realism as the view that there are representation-independent moral facts or properties.)
Street, Sharon. 2008. “Constructivism about Reasons.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3: 208–45. (A Humean form of constructivism.)
Sturgeon, Nicholas. 1985. “Moral Explanations.” In Morality, Reason, and Truth: New Essays on the Foundations of Ethics, ed. David Copp and David Zimmerman. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld. (A defense of representation-independent realism.)
Van Norden, Bryan W. 1992. “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency.” International Philosophical Quarterly 32(2): 161–84. Reprinted in 2000. In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, ed. T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Van Norden, Bryan W. 1993. “Hansen on Hsün Tzu.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 20(3): 365–82.
Wong, David B. 1996. “Xunzi on Moral Motivation.” In Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe. Chicago: Open Court. Reprinted in 2000. In Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, ed. T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.
Wong, David B. 2006. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wong, David B. 2008. “Constructing Normative Objectivity in Ethics.” Social Philosophy and Policy: 237–66.
Wong, David B. 2014. “Response to Bloomfield and Massey.” In Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy: David Wong and his Critics, ed. Yang Xiao and Yong Huang. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Kindle edition.
Wood, Allen. 1999. Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yearley, Lee. 1980. “Hsün Tzu on the Mind: His Attempted Synthesis of Confucianism and Taoism.” Journal of Asian Studies 39: 465–80.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wong, D.B. (2016). Xunzi’s Metaethics. In: Hutton, E. (eds) Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7745-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7745-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-7743-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-7745-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)