Abstract
Among early Chinese thinkers, Xunzi offers some of the most detailed and extensive discussions of moral psychology. While much of that material appears in his remarks about people’s xing 性 (“nature”) and wei 偽 (“deliberate effort”), several other passages that do not explicitly invoke those notions are also relevant to understanding his views on moral psychology. In this chapter I focus primarily on those other passages, since Xunzi’s conceptions of xing and wei are treated extensively elsewhere in this book. In particular, I first discuss his understanding of qing 情 (“dispositions”) and yu 欲 (“desires”). The second section then analyzes Xunzi’s view of ke (“approval”), which plays an important role in his explanation of moral behavior. I review some of the controversies in the English-language scholarship about the relations between yu and ke in Xunzi’s picture of moral motivation, and I defend an interpretation on which Xunzi takes yu and ke to be independent and potentially conflicting sources of motivation that must be harmonized in order for a person to achieve sagehood. The chapter ends with a consideration of how the demand for such harmonization derives from Xunzi’s views about virtue, and notes some questions raised by his position.
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Notes
- 1.
For defense of this personified way of speaking of Xunzi, see the introduction to Hutton (2014). Also, in speaking of Xunzi’s views “on moral psychology,” I do not mean to imply that Xunzi himself identifies “moral psychology” as a distinct area of inquiry—he does not. Nonetheless, for the sake of better understanding his position, I think it is still justifiable to single out this aspect of his thought for discussion, so long as it is borne in mind that this approach is intended to offer only a partial account and is undertaken for specific scholarly purposes. See my remarks about “ethics” as a category for studying Xunzi on p. 67 of this volume, especially note 2 there.
- 2.
I disagree with Tang Siufu about some matters concerning xing and wei , so readers are invited to consider contrasts between the picture I present and his contribution to this volume.
- 3.
All translations here are my own, and are taken or adapted from Hutton (2014).
- 4.
At the end of this chapter, I will return to consider this issue further. For more on how I apply “virtue” in the context of discussing Xunzi, see my essay on Xunzi’s ethics in this volume.
- 5.
Graham (1990: 65) observes that Xunzi “identifies [qing] with the passions,” but Graham also argues that among pre-Han Chinese texts qing “never [simply] means ‘passions’ even in [Xunzi]” (Graham 1990: 59), and instead proposes that for Xunzi it should be understood as “the genuine in man which it is polite to disguise” (Graham 1990: 64) or “the part of man which is genuine and unassumed” (Graham 1990: 65), which in Xunzi’s case winds up co-extensive with the emotions. Graham thus recognizes the aspects of the text that make it tempting to take qing as emotions while also wanting to resist the move to equate qing with emotions. While I think Graham ’s resistance here is right, he does not take into account the fact that Xunzi thinks people’s qing can change (see below in main text here), which poses certain challenges for thinking of qing in terms of what is “genuine,” “polite to disguise,” and “unassumed,” and hence I also do not adopt Graham’s proposed translation of qing.
- 6.
Here I follow the suggestion of Ikai Hikohiro 豬飼彥博 to emend 心 to 身 (ZB, ad loc.).
- 7.
Another possible translation for qing is “feeling,” but this, too, has drawbacks: according to common English usage, one “feels” pain when cut and “feels” cold in winter, but Xunzi does not treat pain and cold as qing. Readers should, therefore, treat “disposition”—like other translations here—as merely a stand-in for qing, and our understanding of qing should be derived from its use in the text.
- 8.
In discussing changes to the dispositions (and further below, changes to the desires), I agree with much of what Kline (2006) says, with the exception that many cases he describes as the development of new dispositions and desires are cases I think are better described as modifications of existing natural dispositions and desires. See also note 16 below.
- 9.
More strongly, at HKCS 23/114/3–5, Xunzi says that ritual requirements bei 悖 (“go against”) people’s qing, i.e., their natural and inborn qing. See note 11 below.
- 10.
I think this point can help resolve the apparent tension between Xunzi’s claims that one’s xing 性 cannot be “remade” (HKCS 8/33/20, 23/113/17–18) and his remarks elsewhere (HKCS 8/33/20, 23/114/14) advocating “transforming” one’s xing. Since the qing are the “substance” of the xing, changes to people’s qing count as changes to their xing. Xunzi thinks people cannot but experience “liking, disliking, happiness, anger, sadness, and joy,” and in that respect the substance of the xing remains constant, but insofar as the timing, intensity, and objects of these experiences change, the xing can be called “transformed.” (Compare production of wooden implements: when making a bowl, the wood retains its characteristic qualities, e.g., rigidity, resistance to water, etc.—it remains wood—while changing in other qualities, e.g., shape, size, texture, etc.) Contra Michael Nylan, though, I do not think Xunzi ever uses xing to refer to the transformed impulses (cf. p. 420n129 in this volume)—I think he always uses xing to refer to what is not yet transformed.
- 11.
Note that, if we take yu as “desires” for now, then at least in the case of the desires for eating and rest mentioned at HKCS 4/15/7, Xunzi seems to have in mind very particular, occurrent desires. Compare the following:
Now people’s xing is such that when hungry they desire satiety . . . and when tired they desire rest. This is people’s qing and xing. . . . When a son gives way to his father [to let him eat first] . . . [or] stands in for his father [to let him rest from work], . . . these two kinds of conduct both go against one’s xing and are at odds with one’s qing. Nevertheless, they are the way of a filial child, and the proper form and order contained in ritual and yi. (HKCS 23/114/2–6)
Here, the idea that following ritual and yi and so deferring eating and resting goes against one’s natural desires makes sense only if those desires are to eat right away and rest right away; if they were merely standing desires and not keyed to a particular time, there would be no conflict with what ritual and yi demand. For the significance of this point, see notes 13 and 16 below.
- 12.
My approach here is modeled after the analysis of desires in Cooper (1999).
- 13.
Contrast Hagen (2011), which distinguishes natural “basic desires” (e.g., a desire for beauty) from “specific desires” (e.g., a desire for ritualized conduct, which is beautiful). That distinction is ill-formed, since the proper contrast for “basic” is “non-basic” or the like, whereas the proper contrast for “specific” is “general.” It also separates what are better considered two aspects of desire—their bases and their objects—into two sets of desires, by assimilating the former to “basic desires” and the latter to “specific desires.” Furthermore, Hagen faces a problem: Xunzi says, “To be as noble as the Son of Heaven and to be so rich as to possess the whole world—these are what people’s qing [i.e., their natural dispositions] are alike in desiring” (HKCS 4/16/18). The reference to qing should, for Hagen , make these desires count as “basic desires,” and indeed he treats a nearly identical list of desires (HKCS 11/53/12–13) as of a piece with “basic desires” (Hagen 2011: 59n17). However, these desires are also highly specific, so Hagen’s contrast between “basic” and “specific” cannot be maintained. See also note 11 above.
- 14.
Most commentators take the shi 是 in these lines as meaning “this,” which they in turn take as referring back to the xue 學 (“learning ”) of the gentleman mentioned at HKCS 1/4/14. I agree to an extent, but rather than referring to the particular items the gentleman studies (e.g., the Odes , Documents, etc.), I think the point must really be about the content of what he studies, namely the Way, in which case we might as well read shi as “right.” Hagen (2011: 68n29) takes the referent of shi to be what is “beautiful/admirable,” but his argument simply overlooks the way that HKCS 1/4/16–21 picks up the topic of HKCS 1/4/14, which the commentators clearly see.
- 15.
See HKCS 4/15/14.
- 16.
Hagen (2011) argues that for Xunzi, moral cultivation changes only “specific desires” and not “basic desires” (see note 13 above). Insofar as Hagen’s “basic desires” are what I call the “basis” of desire, I agree that for Xunzi, cultivation does not replace people’s innate bases of desire. However, Hagen apparently thinks the only possible change to a “basic desire” would be one replacing what I call the basis of desire, and since he thinks that for Xunzi, “basic desires” do not change, he concludes that any change in desire results in a distinct, new “specific” desire, rather than modifying existing “basic” desires. On my view, that conclusion is unnecessary: desiring things as “both pleasurable and proper” can form a single, integrated basis for desire, and if such a conjunctive basis of desire arises by training one’s existing desire for things as pleasurable, the resulting desire can count as a continuation of the previous desire. Moreover, Hagen’s interpretation conflicts with other evidence from the Xunzi. Consider Xunzi’s example of wanting to rest. As noted above (n. 11), this is a specific desire to rest right away. If a tired sage defers resting, as ritual and yi demand, without forcing himself (per ch. 21), then the sage must not experience that desire when he defers resting. However, if the sage rests later and in doing so is acting on a desire to rest, then Hagen would deem that a new, specific desire. Yet, that desire could not be a more specific version of the natural desire to rest right away (because the natural desire is already indexed to a specific time that is, ex hypothesi, not when the sage rests), and were it a wholly new desire, this would not fit Xunzi’s talk of “guiding” and “regulating” desires (HKCS 22/111/4–5), because it would not be a continuation of a prior desire. By contrast, if the bases and objects of (even natural) desires can be altered as I just described, then sages can be seen as acting on desires that are continuous with those in the pre-cultivated state, yet also changed (e.g., the sage desires rest when it is proper, and so acts on a natural desire to rest, experienced at a time and way in harmony with ritual and yi).
- 17.
Some readers think Xunzi himself uses ke inconsistently throughout the passage. I lack space to address their views here, so I simply offer the translation that follows as what I deem the most plausible understanding, when one tries to read ke as consistently as possible.
- 18.
Put most strictly, Sung’s position is that yu has no motivational force of its own (Sung 2012: 380). She does allow that yu can influence what the xin approves, and therefore indirectly cause a given action (Sung 2012: 381). For that reason, if “motivate” is taken as simply a synonym for “cause,” there is a sense in which on her view yu can be said to “motivate” action, but just not “by itself.” However, as I use “motivate” and its variants in this essay, I restrict it to the direct and proximate cause(s) of action, and under that construal, on Sung’s picture yu does not motivate action at all, because for her it can only cause action in the indirect manner described above. While Sung normally frames her view as the claim that “yu cannot by itself motivate action” (Sung 2012: 380), she also occasionally drops the qualifying phrase “by itself” in a way that brings her use of “motivate” closer to mine, e.g.: “It is because Xunzi does not regard yu as capable of motivating action that he argues that the strength of yu is irrelevant to action” (Sung 2012: 377, see also the quote in note 20 below). For these reasons, I do not think it unfair to describe Sung’s view as I do in the main text here and below, even though her position is somewhat more complex than my characterization reveals—those complexities are not crucial to the issue in dispute between her and Van Norden and Wong.
- 19.
For example, see Dongfang [Lin ] (2011) for a rather different approach to understanding ke than those I discuss here. I disagree with various aspects of his view, but have chosen not to pursue those disagreements on this occasion.
- 20.
I say “seems,” because Sung’s reading of the sentence is unclear. She argues against views like those of Van Norden mainly by showing that the implicit grammatical subject of qiu 求 (“seek”) in qiu zhe 求者 (“those who seek”) is not the person’s yu. I endorse her grammatical point, but unless she already assumes something like reading (c), her conclusion that yu does not motivate action simply will not follow. The closest she comes to presenting the argument I reconstruct for her is her remark that “If the person is necessarily subject to xin’s approval, it is difficult to see in what sense the person’s action can be motivated by yu” (Sung 2012: 373n12, emphasis added).
- 21.
See e.g., HKCS 21/103/25 and 22/109/1.
- 22.
Sung’s remarks quoted above in note 20 (especially her use of the word “necessarily”) suggest that she may have in mind the reading I describe here.
- 23.
I follow the suggestion of Wang Niansun 王念孫 to excise the 以 that appears after 欲 in some editions of the text (see ZB ad loc.).
- 24.
Ikai Hikohiro (see ZB ad loc.) suggests that sentence (2) originally contained the bracketed zhi 之, and that it was erroneously dropped during transmission of the text. Even if one does not emend the text to restore that character, zhi (when used as a possessive particle) is commonly elided in classical Chinese, so it is still plausible to treat sentence (2) as if it contained that zhi.
- 25.
Indeed, as far as I can tell, every translator and commentator on the Xunzi takes this part of sentence (1) this way.
- 26.
HKCS 11/51/23 and 20/100/10 allow that people can lack joy for at least some periods. HKCS 29/143/14–16 also suggests this.
- 27.
Sung uses this strategy to try to disarm another passage that potentially challenges her view. Chapter 19 states, “Humans are born having desires. When they have desires but do not get the objects of their desire, then they cannot but seek some means of satisfaction” (HKCS 19/90/3). Because this passage moves from claiming that people have desires to claiming that they will seek to satisfy their desires, it may suggest that desires motivate the seeking. Against this, Sung remarks, “Even though qiu is discussed in close relation with yu in passage [HKCS 19/90/3], there is simply insufficient ground for us to make the further claim that yu itself can materialize into qiu” (Sung 2012: 375). In other words, she takes the absence of any mention of approval here as simply an absence, rather than evidence that approval is not needed for action.
- 28.
The construal of dao 道 as “to enact” is adopted by Li Disheng , for example, who glosses it as xing 行 (Li 1979). The second reading, “guide,” is advocated by Tsukada Taihō 冢田大峯 , for instance, and is based on taking 道 as a loangraph for 導. Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 understands 道 as “find a way to” (for Taihō and Sorai, see Wang 2005: 923n32). Several other commentators fall somewhere between Taihō and Sorai, by taking 道 as meaning not merely “guide,” but moreover “guide to a successful outcome.”
- 29.
In Chinese, jin 禁 is closer to this sense of “prevent,” and one would have expected that word instead of zhi 止, if Sung’s view were correct.
- 30.
On Sung’s view, desires present the heart with (potential) reasons for action, but neither the desires nor the reasons they present have any motivational force without endorsement (approval) by the heart. Hence, if the heart withdraws its endorsement from some desire and the reason it presents, then there is no motivation toward that action any more, and so no sense in which one has to force oneself to act against what one desires. It is also not plausible to try to read the “forcing” as the heart forcing itself to endorse one reason (and desire) over another. For in order to explain such “forcing,” one would have to identify in Xunzi’s view some element (or some activity) in the heart that resists the attempt by some other element (or activity) to endorse a given reason, yet loses out, and I do not think Xunzi’s text offers us anything that could plausibly be taken as what resists an endorsement in the way required for such a picture, though I cannot pursue that argument further here.
- 31.
Kline (2000: 160–61) makes a similar objection. See also note 34 below.
- 32.
I thank Chan Kang 詹康 for stressing to me this line of objection.
- 33.
See HKCS 22/111/8, 4/16/18, 8/34/10.
- 34.
Wong’s account of the alternatives is also highly reminiscent of the debate sparked by Bernard Williams’ essay “Internal and External Reasons” (Williams 1981). For those familiar with that debate, attempts by various authors to articulate a non-Kantian, non-Moorean, and non-Platonist defense of external reasons (e.g., McDowell 1995) provide grounds for thinking that Wong unjustifiably restricts the basis on which Xunzi might hold the “strong” view to just the Kantian and Moorean (and Platonist) approaches.
- 35.
Stalnaker (2006: 74–75, 137–38) argues that Xunzi is not blind to the problem of “weakness of the will ,” and while I agree with Stalnaker that Xunzi certainly recognizes the ways in which people can fall prey to various temptations, I still think the problem of akrasia as I describe it here is one that Xunzi never really addresses.
- 36.
Note that if the ke 可 in ke de 可得 is taken to mean “permissible,” then the sentence attributes to the qing not merely beliefs, but moreover beliefs involving value-laden concepts.
- 37.
One possibility worth considering, but which I cannot explore here, is that both yu and ke might be better understood as what some philosophers have called “besires.” I thank Jamie Hardy for suggesting this idea.
- 38.
That is not to say that akrasia is not a problem for Xunzi at all or cannot be restated in terms that have force against him: one could still ask whether it really is impossible (as Xunzi believes) for someone to ke one action but do another. See also footnote 52 below.
- 39.
Compare HKCS 9/39/9, where Xunzi says animals’ zhi 知 divides them from plants. There, zhi is more plausibly taken as “consciousness” or “awareness” than “reason.”
- 40.
My interpretation of what sort of reasoning this is can be found in Hutton 2002.
- 41.
This view of ke again helps explain why Xunzi does not really worry about akrasia : “choice” and “decision” by themselves imply nothing about what one believes one ought to do, and hence do not invite questions about discrepancies between such beliefs and what one actually does. Also, viewing ke like “choice” or “decision” helps relate Xunzi’s discussion of ke to a remark earlier in Chap. 22: “When the qing is a certain way and the heart makes a choice (ze 擇) for it, this is called ‘deliberation.’ When the heart deliberates and one’s abilities act on it, this is called ‘deliberate effort’” (HKCS 22/107/23–24). Here, Xunzi does not mention ke, so the relation between this description and his discussion of ke is unclear. I suggest that the heart’s ke-ing some action is the same moment the earlier passage calls “choice” (ze 擇), simply described in different terms that bring out one belief or attitude accompanying the choice. This difference also highlights how ke is not simply the same as “choice” or “decision,” since neither of those terms conveys a belief or attitude toward what is chosen.
- 42.
This point also shows that Wong’s “weak” reading, on which “Reason is a Humean ‘slave of the passions’” (Wong 2000: 140) posits an analogy that conflicts with Xunzi’s own analogies for the relation between the xin (or zhi) and the yu.
- 43.
For comparison, whereas Socrates in Plato’s Republic argues that reason should have power over the whole person because only it can know what is best, Xunzi takes for granted that the xin (or zhi) does have such power and argues that the xin (or zhi) should exercise this power, and exercise it correctly. Xunzi’s approach to moral cultivation thus parallels his approach to political reform: he tries to persuade kings and ministers to use their existing powers in better ways, rather than trying to establish whole new power structures.
- 44.
See the second explanation of wei at HKCS 22/107/24, as well as HKCS 22/111/14 and HKCS 23/113/17–19.
- 45.
Of course, an expanded notion of “reason” might encompass these other abilities, but there is a risk that then “reason” will cease to designate a distinctive faculty (as many thinkers have regarded it) and instead designate simply the sum total of human intelligence.
- 46.
It is important to remember that, for Xunzi, reading the Xunzi is not part of his program of moral cultivation: rather, that program requires studying “Classics” such as the Odes and Documents and partaking in rituals and music. So although he may appeal to our reason through the arguments of his text, we should not mistake this for his ideal of moral education.
- 47.
See Mark Berkson’s account (in this book) of how, for Xunzi, ritual practitioners engage in “sophisticated pretending” that involves, among other things, maintaining contradictory stances.
- 48.
Regarding Ji, the desires are identified simply as “the desires of the eyes and ears.” For Youzi, the relevant desire seems to be the desire to sleep, and there is no indication that his wanting to sleep was somehow inappropriate. The case of Mengzi is the least clear about what desire and/or disposition Mengzi is forcing himself to act against, but I think most probably it is the (quite normal) feelings of attachment and desire for his wife.
- 49.
Thus, although Xunzi demands, like Aristotle , that virtuous people be free from internal conflict, Xunzi is motivated by a different problem than what motivates Aristotle’s discussions of enkrateia (“continence”).
- 50.
- 51.
In its focus on the importance of inner harmony for personal wellbeing, such a view would be analogous to the idea one sees in Plato and Aristotle that a disharmonious state of soul is dysfunctional and therefore not compatible with the best type of life, but such a position would not necessarily be the same view as that of Plato and Aristotle , either, insofar as they emphasize the need for the faculty of reason in particular to set the terms of and lead in this harmony, whereas Xunzi (on the view I have proposed here) does not have this emphasis.
- 52.
This problem resembles the “cloudy-eyed” akrasia that Aristotle discusses in Nicomachean Ethics VII.3.
- 53.
Stalnaker (2006: 138) makes this same point.
- 54.
Some might wonder about the sense of si 思 (“pondering”) in “pondering ren” here. As Van Norden (2000: 112) notes, si often refers to thinking about an object fondly or longingly, where the aim is not necessarily to understand it, but rather to possess or be near it. I think that this is the force of si in si ren, and that what the phrase refers to is not some detached contemplation of ren, but rather concentrating on and actively pursuing ren.
- 55.
For more on this point, see Hutton 2000: 230–31.
- 56.
These features of the text seem to me to show that Xunzi was not entirely unaware of the sort of problem that Harold 2011 discusses under the label of “alienation .” Whether Xunzi’s view can adequately address that challenge is a separate issue that I lack space to explore here.
- 57.
For instance, Stohr 2003 argues against Aristotle’s claim (as commonly interpreted) that continence is distinct from and morally inferior to virtue. It is well worth considering to what extent her arguments might have force against Xunzi as well.
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I would like to thank Wang Kai 王楷 and the two editorial reviewers for the volume for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
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Hutton, E.L. (2016). Xunzi on Moral Psychology. 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_7
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