Abstract
This chapter charts Xunzi’s influence from the Han through the Tang dynasties by (i) focusing on the histories of followers trained in Xunzi’s teachings; (ii) considering restatements of important themes in his work; (iii) searching for convergences between Xunzi’s prescriptions and actual institutions; (iv) ascertaining which problems Xunzi’s formulations appear to have resolved; and (v) tracing how Xunzi’s reputation fared over time, especially in comparison with rival masters. The extant sources for Xunzi’s influence during the Han show it pervading at least four aspects of elite culture: in the programmatic outline of the new imperial ideology and the arts of governing; in the philosophical underpinnings of penal and administrative law; in the articulation of a highly plausible picture of the physiology and psychology of human nature; and in the stark rejection of any role for abdication in matters of dynastic succession. Furthermore, Xunzi’s teachings inform discussions about direct vs. indirect remonstrance and technical discussions about logic. The sheer regularity with which Han thinkers advanced ever more “comprehensive” (i.e., systematic) solutions for society’s ills equally suggests the power of Xunzi’s persuasions. Tuning to the post-Han period, this essay disputes the commonly held view that esteem for Xunzi’s writings was in sharp decline by Sui-Tang times, especially in comparison with Mencius. Had Xunzi’s writings really been eclipsed by Mencius during the Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang, scholars would find it hard to account for what texts from those periods reveal. Apparently, wherever we find the impulse to synthesize discrete areas of knowledge and create theories, thoughts of Xunzi arose, judging from our sources. Thus simple justice demands that we take seriously Sima Qian’s claim that Confucian teachings would never have achieved the prominence accorded them in imperial and post-imperial China, were it not for Xunzi’s making Kongzi’s teachings more “glossy and appealing.”
Keywords
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Minister Sun’s [i.e. Xunzi’s] Way preserves rituals and proper attention to duties, and conduct that adheres to the straight and narrow, which gives security to the poor and debased. Mencius was also a great classicist and Confucian (Ru).
Liu Xiang 劉向, Bie lu 別錄 [emphasis mine]
The common wisdom holds that Xunzi exerted an enormous influence on all aspects of Han thinking and policy-making, providing the groundwork for the new imperial ideology of the early empires, even if some of the institutional applications of his grand theories remained to be worked out during the course of the early empires. Scattered support for the prevailing view includes the following: (1) some 320 chapters of writings ascribed to Xunzi were in existence in late Western Han, from which Liu Xiang 劉向 (77–6 BCE) culled a mere 32 for his revised edition of the Xunzi Footnote 1; (2) Han texts (some Western, some Eastern) list among the “disciples of Xunzi” three Han masters for two additional Classics, the Odes and Zuo’s Annals (Zuoshi Chunqiu 左氏春秋 )Footnote 2; (3) Yan Kejun 嚴可均 (1762–1843) identified forty-odd passages in Han Ying’s Han’s Outer Traditions on the Odes (Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 ) that closely parallel passages in the extant Xunzi, while noting that “many” chapters in two Han compilations on the rites, the Rites Record ( Liji 禮記 ) and the Senior Dai’s Rites Record ( Da Dai Liji 大戴禮記 ), draw heavily upon the Xunzi as wellFootnote 3; (4) there are quite substantial citations from the Xunzi in a range of other Qin and Western Han masterworks, including Lü’s Annals ( Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 , comp. 239? BCE), Jia Yi’s 賈誼 New Writings (Xinshu 新書, comp. ca. 170 BCE), Master Huainan ( Huainanzi 淮南子, comp. 139? BCE), and Liu Xiang’s two works, Profusion of Persuasions (Shuoyuan 說苑 ) and New Arrayed Traditions (Xinxu 新序)Footnote 4; and (5) one chapter of Ying Shao’s 應劭 Comprehensive Analysis of Customs (Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義, comp. 203?), devoted to sages who failed to ascend the throne “because of bad timing,” lists Kongzi , Mengzi , Xunzi in chronological order, before assessing a decidedly second-string comprised of eight “worthy men” with the requisite good breeding and cultivation.Footnote 5 To this list (generally accepted by scholars of Xunzi), I would add the extremely important (if today often overlooked) Shiji chapter 129 devoted to “Assets Accumulating,” whose theoretical grounding clearly is based in Xunzi’s notions about human nature and the human condition.Footnote 6
To the foregoing list, direct citations of the sayings of Xunzi (aka Sun Qing 孫卿, or “Minister Sun”) in Han writings amply attest Xunzi’s authority, though oral traditions in teaching and transmission insure fewer citations than might be expected of such a famous classical master living shortly before unification by Qin in 221 BCE.Footnote 7 More surprising (and no less significant) are the number of indirect citations of Xunzi’s work in Han essays and poems. But evidence of Xunzi’s influence does not come only from the received tradition. A fragment from what some literary scholars have seen as Xunzi’s propagandizing efforts has been found among the excavated Qin wooden slips.Footnote 8 And striking similarities in form and content relate writings in the received Xunzi to several newly excavated documents, for example, the Shuihudi treatise on “How to be a good official” and the Zhangjiashan laws and casebooks.Footnote 9
At the same time, to hazard a rough sketch of the trajectory of Xunzi’s influence over the course of the four centuries of Han rule (206 BCE – 220 CE) is no easy matter. The reliance on oral teaching and oral transmission in Western Han obviated the need to cite masters by name, since the better educated could recite a huge corpus of writings from memory. We would expect a paucity of explicit references to Xunzi, and that, predictably, is what we find.Footnote 10 Then, too, different persuaders arguing wildly different points often assigned different meanings to the same set phrases, so that a quick computer search for key terms in Han texts will hardly suffice. The problem is compounded because Xunzi himself aspired to borrow widely from the best policy proposals and ideas on offer in his day, so that ideas often ascribed to him in one text may match those ascribed to another thinker in other late pre-Qin compilations such as the Guanzi 管子 .Footnote 11 As no premium was put on originality in the classical era in China (roughly the fourth century BCE to the mid-fourth century CE),Footnote 12 successful advisors at the various courts of the time were wont to borrow one another’s ideas, slogans, and proposals freely. In consequence, important themes and issues were never cleanly cordoned off from intertextual encounters and afterlives.Footnote 13 Small wonder that modern attempts to separate Mencian from Xunzian influence have been doomed to failure, though Xunzi explicitly denounced Mencius for entertaining several theses. That did not stop the Southern Song leaders of the True Way Learning camp from waging a belated “elevate Mencius /suppress Xunzi” campaign and since most of our earliest printed editions date to their era or later, we cannot exclude the possibility that activist editors deleted or emended materials ascribed to Xunzi, even if we at this remove in time can only speculate about that possibility.
In addition, my training as a historian from Michael Loewe and Nathan Sivin predisposes me to doubt some comforting constructions that still underpin many, perhaps most of the scholarly articles relating to early China today.Footnote 14 As a result of a careful sifting of the Han and immediate post-Han sources, I also have argued, with Loewe , that the “classical turn” favoring Confucian teachings did not occur in mid-Western Han times, under Han Wudi (r. 141–87 BCE), but rather much later, in the reign of Chengdi (r. 33–7 BCE).Footnote 15 As a Han historian, I am therefore forced to confront a serious quandary: how am I, as a responsible historian, to proceed to best ascertain the scope and depth of Xunzi’s influence during the four centuries of Han? How am I to follow up on my hunches, chief among them that few Han thinkers evinced a great deal of interest in debates about human nature (aside from Wang Chong’s contrarian tracts), in large part because Xunzi’s narrative about the human condition already served most rhetorical purposes so well? Footnote 16 Or, even more narrowly, how should I read Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 assertion that Xunzi, in company with Mencius before him, made Kongzi’s teachings “glossy and appealing” to power-holders?Footnote 17 Put another way, can a method be devised by which to verify or reject the common wisdom about Xunzi’s influence during the two Han dynasties?
A review of the extant Han sources for Xunzi’s influence upon Han thought and institutions shows it pervading four aspects of elite culture at a minimum: in the programmatic outline of the new imperial ideology and the arts of governing that some have mistakenly characterized as “outwardly Confucian and inwardly Legalist ”Footnote 18; in the philosophical underpinnings of penal and administrative law, and, more specifically, in justifications offered for “mutilating punishments ”; in the articulation of a highly plausible picture of the physiology and psychology of human nature, its inclinations, and condition in relation to social institutions; and in the stark rejection of any role for abdication in matters of dynastic succession. Footnote 19 Furthermore, Xunzi’s teachings inform discussions about direct vs. indirect remonstrance and technical discussions about logic,Footnote 20 though the evidence is less compelling here, because so many thinkers weighed in on these issues. Still, the regularity with which Han thinkers claimed to advance ever more “comprehensive” (i.e., systematic) solutions for society’s ills suggests the power of Xunzi’s persuasions aiming at this.Footnote 21 That notwithstanding, fundamental insights in Xunzi’s teachings seem to have exerted remarkably little impact on wide swaths of Han thought. To take one obvious example, few Han thinkers aside from Yang Xiong 揚雄 —and Yang’s case is complicated—accepted Xunzi’s argument that no web of sympathetic resonances binds the cosmic and social orders together.Footnote 22 Absent Xunzi’s sharp sense of the divide between the realms and responsibilities of tian 天 (“heaven ”) and man, the Han governing elite’s resort to the stars, magicians, and omens for guidance occurred far more often than Xunzi would have liked, whether the inquiries concerned personal welfare or state policies.Footnote 23
1 Xunzi’s Teachings
A brief synopsis of Xunzi’s most influential teachings shows a master skillfully weaving together accounts of the “people’s inclinations” and analysis of the prevailing “conditions of rule” among the warring states and factions. Key arguments in his “True King’s Rule” chapter allow us to trace these tight connections in Xunzi’s writings.Footnote 24 That chapter opens with a sketch of the instruments of power and authority available to any ruler , whether he aspires to become merely a strong man, a hegemon , or a true king .Footnote 25 Ambitious rulers who are wise learn to promote “the worthy ,” defined as men of breeding and cultivation, and dismiss the incapable, regardless of seniority or heredity; they also improve the commoners’ lot before trying to reform or transform them. All three of these “tools” at the ruler’s disposal presuppose the judicious application of rewards and punishments, the carrots and the stick, by and on the officials in his administration, based on their performances.Footnote 26 Rewards and punishments encourage the right sort of men to serve at court, even as they winnow out the less capable, dishonest, and obtuse. With the right sort of men in his service, the wise ruler benefits from their collective advice, so long as he strikes a balance in his treatment of them. Without trying either to overawe or to favor those at court, the good ruler will give special weight, when judging policy proposals and performances, to a question of how much they are likely to improve conditions in his realm for his people. In this way, the ruler at once can set up stable laws and institutions to serve as models and allow for continual adjustments to those models after appropriate consultations and deliberations. Above all, the ruler supervises the apportionment and distribution of official duties , as the most effective way to insure that legal findings and administrative procedures among the king’s men are just and proper.Footnote 27 Meanwhile, the wise ruler also parades himself as a model of prudential self-restraint, thereby setting the tone for his subjects below. With both the ruler’s reputation and the people’s allegiance assured, his decrees naturally are followed.
Challenging the theories propounded by other famous contemporaries, Xunzi cogently argues that hierarchies are natural and inevitable, both in heaven -and-earth (i.e., the cosmos) and in human society: “Two men of equally high rank cannot serve one another, nor can two men of equally low rank command one another.”Footnote 28 Given the propensity of untutored human beings to mismanage desires and resources, creating artificial scarcities in the process, sooner or later fighting will break out among equals, unless the sage ruler institutes a system of rites and duties that justly apportions rank and other goods of material and symbolic value in accordance with individual societal contributions.Footnote 29 And since the people tend to be as skittish as horses when asked to accept new government measures, the ruler determined to win them over will first secure their approval not only by employing good men in office but also by establishing a wide range of charitable measures designed to advertise his care and love for the people. Relief efforts geared to the needs of the indigent and disadvantaged are particularly important.Footnote 30 Far better to reapportion the wealth gained from taxes than to store up treasure in the palaces, Xunzi reasons, since the people’s unflinching support constitutes the most crucial factor in stable rule.Footnote 31 To Xunzi’s way of thinking, history repeatedly shows the weakness of individual states that failed to implement the policies that he recommends.
Once those policies are in place, effective rulers then have the option of becoming merely hegemons or true kings, hegemons by definition being good at attracting and supporting the officers in their service, in contrast to true kings, defined as rulers who constantly seek ways to enrich their entire subject populations, in the full knowledge that cultivating their subjects’ affections is the only sure way to unify the body politic, rendering it invulnerable to attacks from within and without.Footnote 32 After all, land grabs and duplicitous stratagems typically provoke wars with massive casualties, which usher in widespread disaffection among the very subjects who must provide the stable basis of a strong state.Footnote 33 The rest of his “True King’s Rule” essay elaborates upon the different styles and commitments that hegemons or kings bring to governing. Hegemons know enough to always attend to economic policies, “converting uncultivated lands to cultivated, filling up their granaries and storehouses, so that they have sufficient means to fulfill their purposes.” Footnote 34 True kings go one step further, however, lightening the burdens of their people and attracting capable followers by their charismatic display of ritual decorum (the visible) and the continual exercise of their faculties of deep deliberation and discrimination (largely invisible), which leave nothing to chance, least of all their court appointments. At the palaces of true kings, then, there congregate all the men and materials needed to insure a peaceful world in which farmers, artisans, and merchants ply their trades with profit and pleasure.Footnote 35 As the final guarantors of good rule,Footnote 36 true kings may “restore antique excellence,” even as they follow the models of the “later kings. ”Footnote 37
In giving priority to nourishing the masses, true kings acknowledge the fundamental lesson that “it is easy enough to annex territory, but considerably harder to secure it and maintain control over it.”Footnote 38 Holding onto territory, let alone expanding it, comes most easily to those who have learned to imitate aspects of the cosmic order, e.g., its splendid beneficence, so their orders may in some sense be called “divine .” Footnote 39 Operating on two levels, then, first within his inner circle at the court and then far beyond, the true king secures his subjects’ allegiance through a deliberate use of sumptuary regulations, magnificent ceremonies and spectacles, and sensible economic policies. His people requite him with love and respect and his officials, with affection and trust. In both cases, feelings of obligation may be carried to the point where some think it only right to die for their ruler in battle, if called upon to do so.Footnote 40 By engendering a strong sense of cooperation and unity of purpose in all “those below,” the true king manages, without lucky breaks or resorts to unnecessary violence, to so exemplify charismatic power that his subjects put forth their every effort on his behalf. Footnote 41
The foregoing picture of good vs. ideal rule fits neatly with Xunzi’s portrait of human inclinations in relation to ruling conditions. In Xunzi’s view, human beings are superior to other animate beings for several reasons, including their possession of an innate capacity—not always exercised, to be sure—to judge what is appropriate and proper to their situations, despite conflicting desires .Footnote 42 This capacity located in the operations of the xin 心 (“heart”) allows them, in turn, to congregate in hierarchical groups and redistributive societies (both units being fen 分)Footnote 43 that apportion (also fen ) vital tasks across the entire community. (Xunzi’s “order of officers” delineates that division of responsibilities within the capital, in listing members of the court from the emperor, his chancellor, and the local lords on down to the jailers and magicians.)Footnote 44 Unlike Mencius , who sees a reduction in the number and intensity of the desires as precondition for any cultivation, Xunzi insists that the desires and dispositions so inhere within human nature that one cannot root them out by any means.Footnote 45 As Xunzi says in his chapter on ritual, if people find their inborn desires remain unfulfilled, then they will normally seek to satisfy them. “The inclinations are the very stuff of human nature,” according to Xunzi.Footnote 46 Whereas Mencius predicated a love of parents as a “given” in human nature, Xunzi paid more attention to human desires as givens. As a result, the question of how to satisfy the desires underlies Xunzi’s basic analysis of human psychology and motivation , as well as sociopolitical organization, not to mention his ideas about developing a better second nature.
Xunzi presumes, in company with many earlier thinkers, that the xin more or less simultaneously carries out several functions: categorizing all percepts by means of experience and/or logical analogy; ascertainment of the degree of salience of those percepts to important issues at hand, facilitating the correct assignment of the person’s focal attention; determination of the necessity for and proper direction of action; and summoning the person’s will to undertake necessary action.Footnote 47 As Xunzi sees it, the sheer number of desires that happen to arise in a person’s xin is no indicator of how well that person will rule the body or the body politic. In self-governance or in governing others, all but the most destructive of desires can eventually be turned to constructive social ends, with enough hard work.Footnote 48 And since every sort of operation within the body, not to mention contact between the body and the outside world, generates desires of all sorts (including the potentially good and complex desires for community, symbol systems, and beauty), it falls principally to the developed capacities lodged in the person’s “heart”—ideally, in the ruler’s “heart”—to instantiate for all to see a hierarchy of commitments and activities that conduce to good order rooted in integrity.Footnote 49 In this connection, Xunzi argues that a would-be leader must see to the cultivation of his own nature before undertaking to lead others in the same process.
According to Xunzi, the single factor most likely to preserve the person (not to mention his family and “those below”) from the harm incurred by consuming and counter-productive desires is the person’s proper prioritizing of his competing desires; he delays the gratification of some desires, or even ignores some altogether, in the interests of eventually attaining the full satisfaction and “nourishment” of the most important of the heart’s desires. After formulating and adhering to that hierarchy of desires, the person, however lowly his station, may preserve a measure of independence from the external forces that otherwise tend to tug at the heartstrings, wearing the heart down. Footnote 50 Similarly, the single determinant of good rule is the ruler’s ability to mediate impartially among competing goods and parties in his realm on behalf of the common good. Accordingly, the successful ruler continually exercises superb judgment in deciding the most appropriate response to the conditions unfolding in his own state and those of his neighbors. That explains why an awful ruler like Jie 桀 and a sage-ruler like Yao 堯 may carry out the same basic policies and practices to diametrically opposed results.Footnote 51
Honed through ritual practices, alert to good advice from his teachers and councilors, and steeped in the historical examples learned in a classical education, the true king carefully fashions the methods by which he may simultaneously satisfy and train his subjects’ always complex and occasionally volatile desires for food and sex, for psychological, physical, and economic security, for beauty and moral excellence, and for identity with larger or more enduring social units.Footnote 52 Sumptuary regulations and boons for the weak and old constitute the primary means by which to advertise the ruler’s sense of justice , when it comes to the redistribution of status, honor, and wealth in his realm. Essentially, sumptuary regulations grant privileges in due proportion to societal contributions, even as they curtail access to valuable goods and services for those who have added little or nothing to society’s advancement. “With lofty titles and generous salaries clearly held out before a person [to entice good behavior], and explicit penalties and deep disgrace obviously dogging his heels, how can a man of sense help but reform his ways?”Footnote 53
One passage in Xunzi’s chapter 19, “On Ritual” (“Li lun” 禮論), loosely equates the general category of “ritual” with the term “sumptuary rituals,” insofar as Xunzi celebrates ritual precisely for its propensity to distinguish those of high and low ranks, “varying its quantities and degree of lavishness, in relation to the person’s [current] station and what is appropriate.”Footnote 54 To illustrate this point, Xunzi reminds people that for the funeral of a high minister, notification is sent throughout his own state, so that the “eminent officials will all have time to arrive, and all necessary articles can be procured.” By contrast, at the funeral of an executed criminal, only the man’s wife and children may attend a thin coffin before it is hastily interred in the dead of night, without public lamentations or decorations. Because the rites “eliminate surplus and repair deficiency, extend the forms of love and reverence, and step by step bring to fulfillment the beauties” associated with appropriate conduct, through their regular performance not only the ideal ruler but also the gentleman can attain that enviable “middle state” where emotions and desires are fully expressed and yet channeled to constructive ends via consciously adopted aesthetic forms.Footnote 55 Predictably enough, failure to set the right priorities elicits disastrous consequences: disorder in society and anxiety in the person, so that people become frantic and suffer from feelings of fragmentation.Footnote 56
The very implementation and maintenance of correct sumptuary regulations, in tandem with the careful ranking of the performances of the king’s men in office, will be prompted by the ruler’s keen awareness of his own overriding desire to achieve and sustain pleasurable sensations for himself and his family for as long as possible, which will lead him, under the guidance of wise teachers and officials, to practice the Way. He presumes others are like him in having such desires; it is only that with those of lesser understanding, “the rites and music [may] provide models , but they fail to persuade” people to practice them. Fortunately, people’s mimetic desires for sociality and their innate love of beautiful patterns of all kinds usually suffice to set all but the hopelessly immature on the path toward prudent behavior, so long as sumptuary regulations reinforce the same ethical standards instantiated in the true kings’ compelling behavioral models.Footnote 57 However, those determined to become true kings or true teachers to kings may decide to reserve their highest form of teachings for the select few “in the know,” given how unlikely it is that others of inferior ambitions and greater arrogance can cultivate the same heady powers of the heart that permit instantaneous, yet profound introspection and circumspection. In any case, Xunzi avers, when rites are
properly established and brought to the peak of perfection, no one in the world can add or detract from them. Through them [the rites], the root and branches are put in proper order, beginning and end are justified, the most elegant forms embody all distinctions, and the most penetrating insights can explain all things. [For the most part, we can say that] in the world, those who obey the dictates of ritual achieve good order, . . . win safety and security, . . . and survive. This is something the petty man cannot possibly comprehend.Footnote 58
Thus the best rulers and teachers find their vocations in creating and propagating meaningful standards of decorum for the people through a variety of display rituals designed to publicize and enforce the ineluctable operation of intelligible laws of cause-and-effect within the social sphere. Once they know how to act, exemplary men drawn from all ranks will be happy to “fulfill their duties to honor those who deserve honor and to show affection for those who command affection.”Footnote 59 Only such serene pleasure-giving and pleasure-taking in the context of cohesive communities of shared interests predicated on an equitable distribution of goods and services can provide lasting stability to a realm, as time goes on—all the more so, if the ruling line seeks to integrate new populations.Footnote 60
Generally sidestepping the impulse to preach moral imperatives, Xunzi managed to formulate good reasons why smart yet morally immature people would be led to reliably choose to act in an exemplary way, once sumptuary regulations clarify and reinforce an act’s predictable consequences. Thus Xunzi’s extraordinary achievement lies in his identification of the cognitive role that ritual plays in forming people’s conscious and unconscious values and practices.Footnote 61 After all, concern with rites practice inevitably “involves the establishment and maintenance of a whole range of perceptual norms.”Footnote 62 Xunzi’s commonsensical, if elegant, theories about pleasure’s utility in providing good motivations (“the Hundred Pleasures born of a well-ordered state”)Footnote 63 go a long way toward explaining his tremendous influence during the two Han dynasties. Though Xunzi rightly insisted that those in power would have to act upon his propositions before the merits of those propositions could be fully understood, any techniques or arts that could conceivably liberate thinking people from “being enslaved by things” or by other people were bound to exert a strong appeal in early societies accustomed to think deeply about hierarchy, reciprocity, and social justice .
2 The Reception of Xunzi’s Theories in Han
The cases where one person exerts an indisputable influence upon another person or institution are probably far fewer than we think, given the messiness of human existence and of our own cognitive and social processes.Footnote 64 To trace the influence of a prominent classical master such as Xunzi over the course of the four hundred years that span Western and Eastern Han, historians could conceivably adopt one or more of several tactics, depending upon how they defined “influence.” They could, for instance, (i) focus on the histories of individual followers trained in the master’s teachings, written or oral; (ii) consider restatements of important themes in the given master’s work in texts from the period, whether received or excavated; (iii) search for convergences between Xunzi’s prescriptions and Han institutions with regard to administrative structures, sumptuary regulations, ceremonies, festivals, court cases, and so on; (iv) ascertain which problems the master’s formulations appear to have resolved; and (v) trace how the master’s reputation fared over time, especially in comparison with rival masters with similar allegiances (for Xunzi, that would be Mencius and Yang Xiong ).
To fully explore each of these avenues in turn would obviously take far more time than a single essay affords. However, it may be helpful to list the most important evidence for each of the tactics listed. If we can establish that in early Western Han Xunzi was regarded as the “ultimate ancestor” of several Han masters, that he had his arguments reworked in important new compilations, and that his prescriptions helped to define or shape the Western Han officialdom and laws , then we have gathered indisputable signs of the pre-Qin master’s profound influence in Han times. Those with curiosity may then want to push further, in hopes of ascertaining which philosophical problems seem to have dropped from sight (presumably because the master had resolved them), and how the great master is treated vis-á-vis other recognized authorities. For clearer answers to such questions are likely to shed more light on the more vexing question of classical learning’s overall impact during the four centuries of the two Han dynasties.
2.1 Five Classics Tutelage, via Teaching and Texts
Two fine scholars, Wang Baoxuan 王葆玹 and An Zuozhang 安作璋 , have proposed divergent pictures of how the main scholastic lineages evolved over the course of the two Han dynasties.Footnote 65 Nonetheless, both scholars posit a sharp conflict between different traditions of learning said to originate in the pre-imperial kingdoms of Qi and Lu, with Qi Learning for most of Western Han meaning the Gongyang commentary, and Lu Learning, the so-called “Lu version” of the Odes . The Han standard histories trace the teaching of the Lu Odes back to Shen Pei 申培 of Lu, who initially received his training during Qin (221–210 BCE) from one Fu Qiubo 浮丘伯 of Qi, while studying in the capital. Fu’s teaching ultimately derived from Xunzi, we are told.Footnote 66 In early Western Han Shen Pei proceeded to teach the Lu Odes to seven famous teachers, one of whom, Master Miu 繆, hailed from Lanling, Xunzi’s old base late in life. (Later masters from Lanling, who may have been inspired by their local hero, include Xiao Wangzhi 蕭望之, an expert in ritual,Footnote 67 Meng Xi 孟喜, the Changes expert, and Meng’s father, another expert in ritual.) The line of filiation for Shen Pei’s version of the Lu Odes supposedly stretched from the Han founder’s time right down to the very end of the Western Han dynasty, with Wei Xuancheng 魏玄成, Yang Xiong , and Liu Xiang all strong adherents of this version of the Odes .Footnote 68 Moreover, large areas of overlap existed between the so-called Han version of the Odes taught by Han Ying and Xunzi’s teachings, as noted above.Footnote 69 And if the late account given in Lu Deming’s 陸德明 Jingdian shiwen 經典釋文 (compiled between 582 and 89) can be trusted (a very big “if”), the Mao Odes was yet another commentarial tradition to draw upon Xunzi’s teachings. Lu states that Xunzi, as a fifth-generation disciple of Zixia 子夏, transmitted his approach to the Odes to Mao Heng 毛亨 (aka the Senior Mao) and his nephew, Mao Chang 萇.Footnote 70 Certainly the unprovenanced Kongzi shi lun 孔子詩論 (ca. 300 BCE) lends credence to some association, for in constructing analogies between taking pleasure in sex and pleasure in ethical action, it builds directly upon Mencius and parallels Xunzi’s treatment of such questions.Footnote 71 Unless we speculate that Lu Learning by late Western Han embraced the Guliang and possibly the Zuo as well as the Lu Odes —possibly through Yin Gengshi 尹更始 and Liu Xiang , who were well-versed in both Chunqiu traditionsFootnote 72—it proves harder to establish any tie between Xunzi (if not Shen Pei) and the Guliang 榖梁 tradition that gained imperial favor during the second century of Western Han rule, thanks to Xuandi’s (r. 74–48 BCE) patronage of that text.Footnote 73
However, with Han ritual practices and texts, Xunzi’s influence could hardly be clearer. Despite a dire lack of precise information about the content of the teachings of Hou Cang 后倉/蒼 (fl. 72 BCE), the acknowledged expert in rites during Western Han, it is likely that Hou’s teachings lay behind the major ritual reforms enforced by a group of his pupils in late Western Han led by Kuang Heng 匡衡.Footnote 74 Certainly, Xunzi’s influence is evident in the case of two other students of Hou, Dai Sheng 戴聖 and Dai De 戴德, the “Junior and Senior Dai” who compiled the Liji and Da Dai Liji , for these two Han compilations on the rites incorporate whole passages from the Xunzi nearly verbatim, as do the standard Han treatises on music .Footnote 75 Some would tie Meng Xi’s influential reading of the Changes to Xunzi as well, on the tenuous grounds that Meng would have been trained by his father, a rites expert. If the traditional construction of these interpretive lines of filiation is correct, then Xunzi figures as the “proximate ancestor” for more than the Odes and the Chunqiu —books traced to the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi and cast as the core teachings from the Five Classics for most of Western Han. Xunzi purportedly had a hand in the transmission of no fewer than four out of the Five Classics, the exception being the Documents (which the Xunzi cites repeatedly). Still, the Changes connection seems implausible when Xunzi omits that title from the list of the Classics to be studied.Footnote 76 A respected PRC scholar, Ma Jigao 馬積高 , would go further: aside from the Xunzi-Shen Pei connection, Ma queries every other one of these purported connections, on theoretical, if not substantive grounds.
Turning from classical learning to laws and administration (in a world where legal judgments often turned on Chunqiu readings), we find Xunzi instructing Li Si 李斯 and Han Feizi 韓非子 before Qin unification in 221 BCE. Crucially, however, the extant Han texts do not ascribe to Xunzi complicity in their alleged crimes; they only mention him in the context of their signal achievements.Footnote 77 Zhang Cang 張蒼 , a Qin official who served the Han loyally during the first three reigns of Western Han, is often identified as a adherent of Xunzi.Footnote 78 Zhang Cang was famous for his love of books, his interest in the underlying mathematical basis for the Han system of pitch pipes and calendars, and for his advocacy of civilian rituals, as opposed to military tactics. In Zhang’s constellation of interests, we can discern a template in Xunzi’s insistence on the power invested in ritual acts and the necessity to glean the patterns behind regularities from books.Footnote 79 Legend had Zhang Cang teaching the Zuozhuan to Jia Yi 賈誼 (200–168 BCE), a junior officer at court. At the very least, both these advisors to Wendi evinced the same concerns about moving the Han house beyond the old Qin hegemonic model (to no avail, as it happens), concerns attested in their biographies and in the New Writings (Xinshu 新書) ascribed to Jia Yi .Footnote 80
There remains, of course, the larger question of the real impact of classical learning in Han times, which bears upon the reception of Xunzi’s influence. On the one hand, the proverb from Zou 鄒 and Lu 魯 said, “To leave one’s child a caseful of gold is less good than leaving him the text of a single Classic.”Footnote 81 On the other, we read endless complaints by Han thinkers (e.g., Yang Xiong in his Exemplary Sayings or Fayan 法言) alleging that few among the governing elite were truly passionate about classical learning. Evidently most took classical learning as but a set of irksome exercises to be endured while preparing for a bureaucratic career.Footnote 82 Certainly, classically educated men among the ranks of the governing elite felt no compunction in dropping their Confucian habits of talk when they addressed certain set topics dear to their hearts (reclusion, old age or death, lack of success).Footnote 83 And the prestige attached to classical learning seems never to have been as important to successful careers as a person’s birth and connections.Footnote 84 From the vantage point of the authors of the standard histories (other vantage points are missing), the Academicians at the relatively low rank of 600 bushels only really merited notice when they or their disciples ascended much further up the bureaucratic ladder.Footnote 85
Records on recruitment and promotion during Han provide a rough gauge of classical learning’s real standing during the four centuries of Han, and thanks to Fukui Shigemasa 福井重雅 , the picture grows clearer. Recommended candidates from empire-wide searches for talent were often required to take a written examination called duice 對策, in response to formal questions submitted by the emperor.Footnote 86 Scattered references to the duice exams in the received texts show the duice forcing candidates “to use the Classics to respond” to those questions. The sources name many people who gained “high marks” on the duice, but Fukui ’s careful analysis of these candidates’ careers controverts the “common wisdom” that high achievement on these duice tests resulted in significantly higher or better appointments. Indeed, two Hou Hanshu biographies (those of Kong Yu 孔昱 and Huang Fugui 皇甫規) even tell of men promoted despite poor performances on the duice exams. As Fukui states, “For official appointments during the Han dynasty, the centerpiece was recruitment from the commanderies and kingdoms, which process was clearly governed by norms [other than these exams]. Testing by the emperor and his court played no more than a follow-up, supplementary role.”Footnote 87 This lack of correlation between mastery of the Classics and promotion to high office tells us a great deal about the Han court’s general attitude toward classical learning, even in Eastern Han. But does it tell us, in the end, how Xunzi’s teachings were viewed? After all, Xunzi, like Kongzi before him, thought book learning a less important qualification for sagely rule than efficacious policies promoted through good institutions.
2.2 Han Institutions: Rituals, Economic Institutions, Laws
As all serious students of early China know, the Han modeled their institutions closely after those of Qin, until late in Western Han, when the court, which had taken to employing ever more classicists since the reign of Yuandi (r. 49–33 BCE), witnessed a dramatic “classical turn” under the leadership of three highly committed and immensely talented classical masters at court: Liu Xiang , Liu Xin , and Yang Xiong .Footnote 88 Contrary to the standard view extrapolated from the Salt and Iron Debates (Yantie lun 鹽鐵論 ) polemic, this “classical turn” often led to a greater concentration of powers in the imperial capital at Chang’an, including greater supervision over classical learning.Footnote 89 (Sadly, we know little about Eastern Han trends, in large part because long centuries elapsed between the downfall of the dynasty and the compilation of the standard histories for that dynasty.)Footnote 90
That said, we have already seen how important Xunzi’s ideas and models were to the Qin and early Western Han. The Shiji biography of Lü Buwei 呂不韋 says, for instance, that Lü’s own compilation, the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, was put together by a group of learned men who were “like (ru 如) the followers of Minister Xun,” whose “writings [already] blanketed the empire” before unification in 221 BCE. Xunzi’s writings, in other words, had already become the gold standard for other compilations aiming to integrate all aspects of the sociopolitical realm in a single grand vision.Footnote 91 Early assessments of Gaozu and his immediate successors reveal the founder’s intention to attempt the hegemonic model, as outlined in Xunzi’s chapter 9 (“Wang zhi”).Footnote 92 (It was centuries later, in Western Han, with the classical turn, that dynastic pretensions led some Han rulers to style themselves or their predecessors as “true kings .”)Footnote 93 Xiao He 蕭何, asked to superintend the war effort in Han Gaozu’s absence, declared that visual displays could have far greater impact upon subject populations than any resort to arms, a message consonant with that of Xunzi’s chapter 15 (“Yi bing”). And, most tellingly, when another advisor, Cao Shen 曹參, was asked how best to “restore the state and order the people,” he immediately convened a court conference with “hundreds of Ru ” from the areas where Xunzi had served, since Xunzi was famous for having studied and taught “the arts of good imperial rule,” and for successfully implementing his theories in his last post in Chu.Footnote 94
Xunzi’s writings supply few prescriptions mandating the exact form of administration that he envisioned, though he clearly objected to unfair disparities in wealth or in access to markets, and advocated a range of welfare programs, with a view to hastening the development of a more unified empire. At the same time, Xunzi’s “order of officers” to staff his ideal capital (noted above, p. 403) shows that he thought an ideal government would assume a very broad range of responsibilities, both foreign and domestic: policing and defense, the judiciary, the protection of natural resources, urban planning and public sanitation, supervision over farming, trading, and animal husbandry, and quality controls to be enforced over artisans and professionals of every sort, including shamans, prayer masters, and cult officiants. If aside from Plato’s Laws the sheer ambition of Xunzi’s comprehensive vision finds few parallels in other pre-industrial societies, equally unusual was Xunzi’s belief that the hierarchical division and ranking of various groups had best be balanced by reciprocal measures facilitating better communications across community groups. We have seen how fundamental is Xunzi’s reliance on the employment of sumptuary regulations as a mechanism for encouraging good conduct and dissuading bad. For this reason, we should not discount—as art historians have been wont to do—the Han effort to establish strict sumptuary regulations governing social relations both in this life and in the next.Footnote 95 Xi’an archaeologists excavating Western Han Chang’an tombs report strict adherence to such regulations in the capital, as well as in the commandery and county administrative centers, suggesting the political will in Han to enforce multiple gradations, as do the Zhangjiashan stipulations correlating the orders of honor with bestowals of land, houses, and other goods.Footnote 96 Seals from Han tombs likewise testify to this Han preference for finely graded hierarchies .Footnote 97
Methods for ranking populations are balanced by a set of interlocking policies designed to facilitate intrastate communications across the bureaucratic ranks, and even between the emperor and the least of his imperial subjects.Footnote 98 Xunzi’s theories held that good rule could ensue, given the complexities of ruling diverse populations over vast territories, only if the hegemon or true king broadly solicited proposals and criticisms from representatives of each group within a context of mutual trust. As Xunzi put it,
There has never been an enlightened ruler who succeeded by keeping secrets from his ministers or failed by being too frank with them. . . . If the ruler of men is too secretive, then only slanderous reports will reach his ears and honest advisers will fall silent. . . . But if the ruler is open with his men, then honest advice will reach his ears and slanderous reports will cease; gentlemen will draw close to him and petty men will depart.Footnote 99
By Xunzi’s reckoning, then, a court’s openness to frequent consultations and corrections is both a precondition for and hallmark of a “flourishing ” civilized society, and lest we forget: Xunzi’s proposals diverged sharply from those of many late Zhanguo (aka Warring States) thinkers, precisely in their insistence upon the need for open and frank communication between parties in the realm.
Adoption of the Xunzian model led the Han throne for four centuries to style itself as “a bureaucratic monarchy” operating by a kind of constitutionalism, in sharp contrast to “an oriental despotism ruling through a bureaucracy.”Footnote 100 For this reason, the Han patrimonial rulers relied upon frequent and wide consultation on policy matters with those deemed qualified by virtue of their ranks, their training, or their charactersFootnote 101—so much so that custom decreed that select groups of high-ranking bureaucrats, rather than the emperor himself, would initiate certain types of policy discussions and set policies, and bring deliberations to binding votes.Footnote 102 The Han emperors were bound to uphold the precedents of their own ruling line, in addition to the laws of the land.Footnote 103 Meanwhile, the interlocking systems of official recruitment and promotion in Han provided regular avenues for “advice and consent” by officials and official candidates.Footnote 104 Petitions to the throne could even be submitted by commoners (directly at first and indirectly later). Moreover, the Han throne sought to explain, publicize, and propagate its values among subjects, great and small, through the circulation of regular reports from the people and to the people. The level, quality, and frequency of communications between the throne and its subjects seem unusual, if not unique in classical-era civilizations. It is well-nigh inexplicable unless we construe the Han court as operating a consortial rather than autocratic form of rule.
In Xunzi’s view, all power-holders should be judged by how well they employ the capacities they have honed over time for the benefit of those at lower ranks. So long as good men were in place, helping the ruler to foresee and forestall every sort of problem in the realm, it was only fair that
If the administrative affairs be in disarray, the chancellor takes the blame. And if the customs of the realm be in error, the high-ranking are judged to be at fault. And if the world is not unified and the local lords habitually rebel, then the so-called ‘heavenly king’ is clearly not the right man for the position.Footnote 105
Not even the emperor was above blame, in other words, for it was his responsibility not only to exemplify ritual decorum but also to provide for the common people enough food and shelter, while preventing the wealthy and high-ranking from scheming against the common good.Footnote 106 Han texts reveal a readiness on the part of the Han emperors to accept blame for all manner of unfortunate events due to human misadventures, intentional wrongdoing, or natural disasters, a rhetorical readiness—real or feigned—that makes it all the harder for modern historians to “read” the imperial personalities buried beneath the layers of formulaic language.Footnote 107
Han policymakers clearly noted Xunzi’s calls for a more integrated economy as basis for a strong ritual order. Xunzi had written in his “Great Summary” (“Da lüe” 大略 chapter),
If one does not enrich [the people], there is no way to nourish the people’s inclinations [tied to their sense of satisfaction in life]; if one does not teach them, there is no way to order the people’s natures . Therefore, each family should have five mu and a house, and a hundred mu of fields to be cultivated. The people work at their occupations, and do not take time away from them—that is the way to enrich the ruler. One sets up the Capital Academy, establishes the local community ritual centers, cultivates the six rites —that is the way to lead them to the Dao. As the Odes says, “Give them drink; give them food. / Teach them and encourage them.” The king’s business will then be completed.Footnote 108
Here Xunzi’s assumptions about economic behaviorFootnote 109 resonate with his ideas about social engineering, using human psychology and motivation techniques to satisfy the desires of a subject population and thereby unify them, while securing the material needs and physical and psychic well-being of the ruler as well. Jia Yi , in two memorials, took much the same line in arguments to the Han throne, ca. 178 BCE, as did Chao Cuo 鼂錯 around the same time:
It is human nature that if a man does not eat twice a day, he is hungry. And if he does not have garments cut for him for a whole year, he is cold. When hunger gnaws at the stomach but one cannot obtain food, when cold bites the skin but one cannot obtain clothes, when even a loving mother is unable to protect her child—how can the ruler ever command his people’s allegiance? The enlightened ruler knows the truth of this. He therefore strives to keep his people working at agriculture and sericulture; he lightens the poll tax and other government levies; he increases the stores of grains in order to fill the government granaries and depots, the better to prepare for floods and droughts, so that his people’s allegiance can thereby be secured. (Hanshu 24A)Footnote 110
Similarly, Sima Qian’s treatise on money-making is premised upon two of Xunzi’s basic ideas: first, that all people have an innate desire to make a profit, and second, that none of the gods has agency in everyday matters, though credulous people can and do sometimes alter the course of human history.Footnote 111 Even the Hanshu economic treatise echoes Xunzi in passages severely criticizing Han Wudi and Wang Mang, for respectively misusing talk of ritual implements in Wudi’s drive to extort money, and for Wang’s “liking to imitate the ancients, while ignoring the needs of the time.”Footnote 112 Wudi clearly twisted Xunzi’s impeccable logic when he mandated that the “mountains and seas [including lakes, streams, etc.], as storehouses of heaven-and-earth, ought properly to belong to the Imperial Privy Purse,” rather than leaving them as public commons whose natural products could augment the incomes of those living nearby.Footnote 113 For this, Han Wudi, just like Wang Mang, was roundly condemned in Eastern Han.
Further Han-era evidence testifies to Xunzi’s profound influence upon Han discussions about human motivation and ordinary social obligations. As readers will recall, Xunzi emphasized that only the inborn desires are prior to conscious formations, but feelings of love and duty can be the product of conscious activities, as well as the product of the unconscious mimetic emulation of role models.Footnote 114 From this Xunzi concludes that each father-son relation must be characterized by courtesy and respect expressed through ritual forms, if the relation is to be mutually beneficial, in a stark departure from more conventional moralists who believed children always had the greater obligation. A son’s “conformity” with his parents’ wishes could never mean blind submission, in the views of Xunzi and his followers, since conscious deliberation was needed, if the son was to determine how best to further his parents’ interests in the long run.Footnote 115 This idea that familial and social relations must be properly maintained through the efforts of both parties, with the onus on both sides to act well, is the basis of nearly all Han legal and ethical writings, whether the writers are discussing thorny legal cases, fraught gender relations, or decisions about remonstrance.Footnote 116 Therefore, Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 , Ban Zhao 班昭, Wang Chong 王充 , Zhongchang Tong 仲長統, and Kong Rong 孔融 all began with Xunzi’s own statement that socially constructed relations relied upon both parties’ conscious commitment to good behavior.
The issue of motivation underpins Xunzi’s influence on legal theories and practices. Han legal thinkers, believing Xunzi to be “the only man in his time [late third century BCE] to be clear about the Way of True Kings ,”Footnote 117 drank deeply from the well of Xunzi’s writings (and admitted to doing so), even if the process known as the “Confucianization” of the laws was not completed until late imperial China.Footnote 118 The opening passage in the Hanshu “Treatise on Penal Laws,” in fact, begins with a summary of points stressed in the Xunzi, as do several later sections.Footnote 119 An edict issued by Chengdi also names Xunzi as the authority on the controversial issue of “mutilating punishments ,” noting that the first court deliberations on the laws were conducted by chancellor Zhang Cang 張蒼 under Wendi.Footnote 120 Nor should one discount the probable influence of Xunzi on Jia Yi , whose preoccupation with sumptuary regulations led him to argue that “the rituals do not extend down to the commoners, nor are mutilations imposed on those of high rank.”Footnote 121 Indeed, from Wendi on down to Emperors Xuan, Yuan, and Cheng, the court’s formal deliberations on punishments within its larger system of rewards and punitive measures bear all the signs of Xunzi’s influence,Footnote 122 with high officials, Academicians, and “those well versed in the statutes and ordinances” convening with the emperor to discuss the appropriate level of violence likely to promote the domestic peace. A very long passage from Xunzi, also cited, stipulated the exact conditions under which punishments should be reduced in strife-torn areas.Footnote 123 Thus Xunzi’s pronouncements figured as touchstones in bureaucratic debates about when to launch “punitive campaigns” against foreigners, and when to curry favor with populations (foreign and domestic) via regular and semi-regular disbursements in the form of charities, amnesties, and the “gracious recompense” offered other states for their tribute.Footnote 124
When we examine the Han contexts that celebrate Xunzi’s authority, through either explicit or unmarked citations, those contexts rarely concern the debates over human nature that preoccupy so many academics today. Only two Han thinkers take up that issue, Wang Chong and Xun Yue 荀悅 (148–209), with Xun the author of Shen jian 申鑑 and Xunzi’s own descendant, as it happens.Footnote 125 Discussions about human motivation —a topic of far greater importance to members of the governing elite—are more apt to cite Xunzi than Mencius .Footnote 126 Han thinkers typically invoked Xunzi’s teachings under certain circumstances, for example, when they wanted to convince others that civil actions were more likely to conduce to good order than military actions; when they calculated how best to deploy troops in unavoidable wars , so as to minimize damage to the ruling house and throne; when they were conscious of their need to resort to reasoning by analogy (“extending categories” in Chinese) in drafting legal documents or weighing alternative courses; and when they provided economic incentives within the rituals, in the hopes of securing the interests of the ruler and his subjects equally.Footnote 127 In all these areas, forging a consistent tie between people’s feelings and conditions within the realm was Xunzi’s signal achievement, which translated into the noteworthy stability of the Han empire, as compared with its counterpart, the Roman empire, whose continuance virtually required eternal war for cultural and economic reasons.Footnote 128
2.3 Comparisons with Rival Thinkers
There is little question that Han and post-Han thinkers accepted Xunzi’s account of human motivation in relation to the inborn nature and second nature (both xing).Footnote 129 Only three pieces of writing discuss Mencius’ famous theory, “Human nature is good,” at fairly widely spaced intervals, and all three dismiss Mencius’ account as naive and unhelpful.Footnote 130 Once we no longer think of the human nature debate as the single key to the early reception history of works by the Confucian masters, it seems relevant that (1) the names of Mencius and Xunzi are routinely coupled in Han, as were those of Kongzi and Mozi in pre-Han texts, with both Mencius and Xunzi being cast as “doors” [i.e., convenient entrés in] to Kongzi’s teachingsFootnote 131; (2) in any given work the citations of Mencius seldom outnumber citations to Xunzi, the Salt and Iron Debates being an exceptionFootnote 132; and (3) of the pair, it is only Xunzi whose writings on ritual and law are cited extensively. Footnote 133 Explicit Han citations to the Mengzi —aside from some disparaging remarks and a great many sayings that do not correspond to the extant versionFootnote 134—mainly come from two Mengzi books or chapters, Books 1 and 7, outlining the basic tenets of early pleasure theory and celebrating “benevolent government,” two themes that came to be elaborated in the extant Xunzi. Curiously, neither the “baby and the well” nor Ox Mountain figures in the surviving traditions dating to Western or Eastern Han, and the phrase “overflowing qi ” appears but twice in a Han text.Footnote 135
Xunzi’s impact should also be noted, despite the paucity of available sources, in relation to good writing. For example, the Hanshu “Treatise on the Classics and Other Writings” (“Yiwenzhi”) treats Xunzi as one of the four important creators of the fu 賦 style , who supposedly used his verses to deliver elegant remonstrances to the courts he served; the fu form, of course, was the single most important verse form in the long centuries from Han through Tang.Footnote 136 In prose, the rigor of Xunzi’s logic and the elegance of his lun 論 (single-themed essays) make Xunzi one of the most brilliant essayists of all time, whose language found its way into memorials and essays.Footnote 137 It is true that during Eastern Han and the immediate post-Han period some came to argue that Yang Xiong’s writings had surpassed those of the pre-Qin classical masters.Footnote 138 But Xunzi’s place as master-teacher “encouraging learning” (especially classical learning) was not superseded until the Song, when members of the True Way Learning persuasion denounced Xunzi and Yang Xiong as false masters “incapable of continuing the transmission of the Way.”Footnote 139
Perhaps the clearest indication of Xunzi’s influence during the Han period is, however, the prominence of men from Lanling, Xunzi’s place of residence late in his life, at the Han courts—a prominence that is not likely accounted for by any other reason than the eminence of Xunzi as a teacher.Footnote 140
3 Xunzi’s Reception During Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang
Modern scholars, basing themselves on the extant texts in the received tradition, often erroneously conclude that the esteem for Xunzi’s writings was in sharp decline by Sui-Tang times, if not already by the Six Dynasties, especially in comparison with the reverence accorded his presumed rival, Mencius .Footnote 141 However, we have at our disposal today but a tiny fraction of the texts that once existed, and the catalogue of losses incurred by both the family and imperial library collections during the Six Dynasties through Tang period is simply stupendous.Footnote 142 So just as it would make a huge difference if students of Han studies had the praise piece for Xunzi that Liu Xiang ascribed to Dong Zhongshu ,Footnote 143 it would make a huge difference if we had the two synopses of Xunzi’s main points by the prominent classicists Wei Zheng 魏徵 (dated 631, in one juan) and Ma Zong 馬總 (dated 786, in 18 entries in 12 juan), in addition to Yang Liang’s 楊倞 complete commentary compiled by 818, which serves as the primary basis for research on Xunzi today.Footnote 144 Then, too, in the medieval period (as in Western and Eastern Han), “the customary way of expressing agreement with an earlier authority was to use his text, often without attribution, reproducing the same or closely similar phrasing,”Footnote 145 which means that direct citations were seldom made in fine writing by accomplished classicists during the Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang periods.
Given the losses incurred to medieval texts, all we can say at this point is this: Had Xunzi’s writings really been eclipsed during the Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang by those of his perceived rival Mencius , scholars would find it hard to account for the foregoing, as well as for several important essays by Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819), Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), and others of their day.Footnote 146 Nor would we find the multiple citations of Xunzi in Tang collectanea, in legal and ritual treatises, in poems, and in other sources reflecting on classical learning. Footnote 147 We sometimes forget the obvious: that Xunzi was not only a master of political theory, but also a deeply “erudite man well-versed in all matters” (tong Ru 通儒 ), both theoretical and the practical. Wherever we find the impulse to synthesize discrete areas of knowledge and create theories, thoughts of Xunzi arose, judging from our sources. Moreover, the literary guwen movement that emerged after the An Lushan rebellion (755–763) celebrated Xunzi’s writing as one of its models, and the Tang preoccupation with “quietude” invoked Xunzi, along with Buddhist techniques and the “Doctrine of the Mean.”Footnote 148
In this regard, it may be instructive to consider Liu Zongyuan’s attack on Han Yu in his essay entitled “Sayings about Heaven” (“Tianshuo” 天說). Liu, unlike Han , did not believe in the existence of anthropomorphic gods named Heaven and Earth meting out praise or blame, good or bad fortune. Cleverly and subtly, Liu refuted Han Yu’s rhetoric in two letters by adapting Han’s specific metaphors of vegetation and illness to mock Han’s talk of the “mutual influence between heaven -and-man,” and the non-material aspects of human life.Footnote 149
What is above and blue the world calls “heaven ”; what is below and yellow, the world calls “earth.” What fills the space between . . . the world calls Primordial qi . Cold and heat the world calls yin and yang. All of the foregoing, no matter how vast, are no different from fruits and gourds, abscesses and piles, grasses and trees. . . . Heaven and earth are immense fruits and gourds, and the Primordial qi is an immense abscess or pile, just as yin and yang are immense forms of vegetation. How can any of these reward merit and punish harm? Violence and fatuousness, greed and over-consumption, are not due to spirits, are they?
Merit is gotten on one’s own [through men’s actions], and disaster is self-inflicted. . . . What morals are to man is what yin and yang . . . or the four seasons are to heaven . . . . One should use one’s powers of discernment to try to understand human morality, and use one’s will to try to realize it. . . . This is the sages’ enterprise; morality and the Five Constants are things that exist only in the human sphere. (Liu Hedong ji)Footnote 150
From Liu’s conception of the material universe flowed his ideas about justice and the administration of earthly punishments, as well as his faith in a complete separation between the physical cosmos and the operations of the Five Constants in the social world.Footnote 151 And we should see Liu Zongyuan as but one of many Tang figures to openly denounce the correlative cosmological theories of earlier times,Footnote 152 following Xunzi’s dictum, “Only the sage does not seek to understand Heaven .”Footnote 153
Still, David McMullen makes a compelling case regarding the compartmentalized nature of Tang classical learning, and the general lack of programmatic goals or means to “integrate ancient and modern” among the career-minded men of letters (Liu Zongyuan himself, and men like Du You 杜佑, Du Yu 杜預, and Quan Deyu 權德輿 being notable exceptions). For most literate men of Tang bent on a career, he says, the intended social context informed, if not determined, the appropriate compositional style and its contents. Nor was the emphasis on ideological purity and interiority so pronounced as it later became under the Song Neo-Confucians of the True Way Learning strain. Certainly Han Yu was an extrovert who boasted of “hundreds and thousands” of contacts. Footnote 154 That the highly selective readings produced under the distorting lens of later moralizers do not stop with the famous Han Yu , curiously dubbed a proto-Neo-Confucian, is apparent from the ceaseless citation of one line from Han Yu’s “Reading Xunzi” (“Mencius is perfection itself, the purest of the pure!”) without the following assertions: “If not all [Xunzi’s] phrasing is exquisite, his points of departure from Confucius are very few indeed! Xunzi and Yang Xiong are pure, in the main, but they have minor flaws.”Footnote 155 Similarly, readers often know Yang Liang’s pronouncement that Xunzi’s teachings were “easy to grab hold of, so he became a truly renowned man-in-service,” rather than his far more complimentary claim that the Xunzi “gives wing to the Six Classics, and adds lustre to Kongzi himself.”Footnote 156 Equally to the point, while beginning students of Chinese culture learn Han Yu’s rather offhand comments in his “Transmission of the Way” schema, scholars tend to overlook how few men took up Han’s views on the Daotong 道統 . Sun Fu 孫復 (988–1057), for example, named Xunzi, in company with Mencius and Yang Xiong , as sages to be praised for passing on the teachings of the “Duke of Zhou and Kongzi ,”Footnote 157 just as Li Hua 李華 (715–766) and Quan Deyu (759–818) had done before, celebrating Xunzi as a true proponent of the teachings associated with Confucius who had promoted the Classics and their techniques, and thereby “helped and assisted Five Classics learning” as much as some pre-Qin masterworks.Footnote 158 We should not be surprised, then, that the History of the Jin (Jinshu 晉書)—completed in 648, twenty-five years after Han Yu’s death—gives a totally positive overview of Xunzi’s work, praising him as a central figure in the development of “not merely literature but wen 文 [‘culture’], he having transmitted the torch of this cultureFootnote 159 down through the generations.”Footnote 160
Yang Liang’s commentary unmistakably casts Yang as major contributor to this inexpressibly sublime culture inherited from the Duke of Zhou, for in his Preface Yang claims first, that all the Xunzi text(s) that he compared were so error-ridden that he virtually had to save the text from extinction, and second, that only “would-be experts in political gossip” in his era perused the Xunzi, as others deemed study of that text to be a “separate branch” of classical learning.Footnote 161 When Yang lamented how few were the true connoisseurs of Xunzi’s writings in his own day, he was merely deploying a standard rhetorical trope found in countless prefaces, a trope expressly designed to simultaneously enhance Yang’s own reputation for discernment and flatter readers of his manuscript. However, gullible modern readers have trusted the factual accuracy of Yang’s lines, which are hard to square with multiple references, in both Yang’s Preface and in his commentaries, to the existence of many manuscript versions of the Xunzi in circulation.Footnote 162
That said, in most respects Yang’s commentary looks just as we would expect, in that Yang offers paraphrases of the difficult-to-parse passages, identifies historical figures who appear in the text, glosses characters (sometimes explaining their derivations), points out loan characters, and cites the Classics and pre-Han and Han masterworks, noting at least some of the parallels between Xunzi’s writing and equally famous masterworks. But however good a guide Yang proves to be in most respects, Yang’s sense of Xunzi’s teachings falters badly upon occasion. To take one egregious example: Yang is far more credulous about the gods of heaven and earth than Xunzi, and thus Yang misconstrues a well-attested four-character description of the highest state of consciousness that an enviable person of cultivation can achieve, without resort to supplication of the gods (who may or may not exist), turning it into a portrayal of a magical person “himself conversant with the gods of heaven and earth” (zi tong yu shen ming 自通於神明 ).Footnote 163
As in Han, throughout the post-Han and pre-Song period the extant sources show remarkably little interest in the “Human Nature is Ugly” controversy. That phrase appears less than ten times in the extant historical accounts and in Buddhist tracts, and not in any theoretical way outside of Buddhism .Footnote 164 This evident lack of interest during the third through the ninth centuries forms a most striking contrast with the Northern and Southern Song preoccupation with Xunzi’s slogan “Human Nature is Ugly.” As the following essay in this volume will show, in Song a wide range of thinkers, both inside and outside the True Way Learning neo-Confucian circles, condemned Xunzi’s teachings on the basis of this one theory (generally mischaracterized).
4 Conclusion
In 1899 Liang Qichao made what seems like an overstatement: that the impact of Xunzi’s teachings had been more profound on the history of imperial China than that of the Supreme Sage, Confucius :
From Qin and Han on, political and scholarly theories both derived from Xunzi. . . . As for what we call the scholarly arts, they all derived from Xunzi, including Han Learning and the two factions in Song Learning. That being the case, one can say for the last two millennia, the world has only seen Xunzian Learning, not Confucian Learning.Footnote 165
Presumably Liang had the following points in mind as he wrote: (1) the little interest shown in theories of human nature as compared with interest in pleasure theories describing techniques to motivate people; (2) the abiding interest in Xunzi’s views of laws , rewards and punishments, sumptuary laws, and ritual institutions; (3) the adoption of Xunzi’s view that good government depends upon good men administering the laws, rather than rule by law; (4) Xunzi’s rhetorical style, with its propensity to end rigorous demonstrations of logic with apt citations from “proof texts” (nearly always the Odes or the Documents ), thereby encouraging the gradual elevation of the Classics during Han and post-Han times.Footnote 166 Upon reflection, Liang Qichao’s sweeping statement simply casts Li Zehou’s assessment, made within the last decade or so, in more dramatic language, for Li says,
Due to the influence of Song and Ming neo-Confucians, usually only Confucius and Mencius are considered to be the founding fathers of Confucianism. In actuality, however, without the contribution of Xunzi, Confucianism would never have survived.Footnote 167
Li overstates the case; the pool of Kongzi’s supporters extended far beyond the ranks of the self-identified Confucians to include the much larger pool of dedicated classicists. Still, simple justice demands serious consideration of Sima Qian’s portrayal of the history of the early classicists, where Sima Qian argues that, were it not for Xunzi’s making Kongzi’s teachings more “glossy and appealing,” Confucian teachings would never have achieved the prominence accorded them in imperial China and afterwards.
Notes
- 1.
When I speak below of “Xunzi’s writings,” I refer to the recension edited by Liu Xiang originally entitled “New Text,” the basis for all modern editions, including that of Yang Liang , even though Liu may have accepted materials incorrectly ascribed to Xunzi. References to chapters in the Xunzi, however, will be according to the different arrangement of chapters made by Yang Liang, which most modern commentaries, translations, and concordances follow, including that of WXQ.
- 2.
The three are Master Mao 毛 for the Mao Odes ; master Fu Qiubo 浮邱伯 for the Lu Odes ; and the Han imperial counselor Zhang Cang 張蒼 (fl. 180 BCE) for the Zuoshi Chunqiu . The last identification, from Liu Xiang’s Bie lu 別錄 (cited in the Zuozhuan zhengyi 正義, Postface 序), suggests that the Zuo’s influence started earlier in Western Han than some believe. However, the time gap between Xunzi and Zhang Cang seems impossibly large, unless Zhang was a very young disciple of a very elderly Xunzi. Yan Kejun 1883: 3/3b, also casts Xunzi as a master of the Guliang Tradition but on somewhat shaky grounds. Yan can’t explain how Xunzi can be both a student of Zixia 子夏, on the one hand, and lambast “the debased Ru in Zixia’s camp” (子夏氏之賤儒) in his chapter 6 (“Fei shi’er zi,” HKCS 6/25/1), on the other, unless Xunzi charges the followers of Zixia with being unfaithful followers (?); cf. Fayan 12/12.
Several translations can be recommended to those who do not read Chinese or Japanese: those by James Legge , for the Liji (1885); by James Robert Hightower, for the Hanshi waizhuan (1952); by Steven Durrant, Li Wai-yee, and David Schaberg , for the Zuozhuan (2016); by Eric Henry , for the Shuoyuan (forthcoming); and by this author, for the Fayan (Nylan 2013).
- 3.
See Yan Kejun 1883: 3/3b; cf. Li Hua 2010; Lai Yanyuan 1963. Many scholars have noted that passages borrowed from the Xunzi appear in the Da Dai Liji chapter 49 (“Zengzi lishi”); also the Liji chapters 19, 39, 46 (“Yue ji,” “San nian wen,” “Xiangyin jiu yi”). Fan Youfang 2001 ruminates on Xunzi’s chapter 19 (“Li lun”), but, notably, Xunzi never identified “desires ” and “evil” or “ugly” 惡 (see the discussion below). Ma Jigao 2002: 197 disputes the influence of Xunzi on neoclassical texts, but his reasoning is faulty.
- 4.
For these works, see the indexes to the translations of the Lüshi chunqiu by Knoblock and Riegel 2000Riegel, Jeffrey K.; of the Huainanzi , by Major et al. 2010; of the Shuoyuan, by Eric Henry (forthcoming), all of which are well-indexed. NB: My translations often depart from those of Knoblock’s three-volume rendition (1988–1994) of the Xunzi [indicated by “K” in the footnotes below]; I provide references to his work for the reader’s convenience.
- 5.
See Ying Shao 1996, chapter 7 (“Qiong tong”). Xunzi is identified as both a sage and a worthy man of breeding (xian 賢)—the latter by his contemporaries. Then come worthy men, beginning with Yu Qing (supposedly Xunzi’s teacher), and ending with Chen Fan of Runan. Xunzi is praised for his learning in four of the Five Classics. (Oddly enough, the Documents does not appear in the list, though scholars have long detected Xunzi’s influence in Fu Sheng’s “Great Commentary” to that work.) NB: My translation of the word xian 賢 is meant to give equal weight to the social status and character of the “worthy .”
- 6.
The chapter’s complex argument is studied in Nylan (2015a). Nor is the silence of the Xunzi regarding the legend of Bo Yi and Shu Qi, the main subject of Shiji chapter 61, coincidental, I would argue. Many other unattributed sayings from the Xunzi appear in Shiji (e.g., SJ 128.3226, cited in WXQ, juan 1, p. 11).
- 7.
According to Ying Shao 1996, Sun Qing 孫卿 (“Minister Sun”) is the courtesy title the “men of Qi” gave Xunzi (i.e., Sun Kuang 孫況), though Sun’s highest official posts were Libationer for Jixia in Qi and later Prefect of Lanling, for Lord Chunshen in Chu. The number of direct citations to Xunzi in Han writings is 157 times, according to the CHANT ICS Concordance Series, as compared with 119 times for Mengzi , of which 42 come from Wang Chong alone. (Apparent citations to Mengzi are also sometimes to other figures.) Not all citations to Mencius are flattering, though all extant citations to Xunzi are. More citations to Xunzi than to Mengzi occur in the Shiji [hereafter SJ] and Hanshu [hereafter HS] (28 vs. 16 in SJ; 24 vs. 16 in HS). Indirect citations number many more, as noted below.
- 8.
See Chen Liangwu 2009: 119, for details. Chen sees these “Working Songs” as Xunzi’s attempt to proselytize by easy-to-remember mnemonics.
- 9.
The terminus ad quem for SHD is 217 BCE, and for ZJS, 186 BCE.
- 10.
See Nylan 2001, 2008. The “Gongyi” pian of Kong congzi 1998 is one of many texts to query the reliability of oral transmissions transcribed. NB: By this point in time, a comparison of excavated and received texts allows us to assert the probability that many direct references to masters (esp. Kongzi himself) were inserted over time into later editions. This pattern is so well known that Liao Mingchun 2006, esp. p. 72, uses it to date editions (though Liao doesn’t expand upon the implications of his findings).
- 11.
Xunzi often cites traditions or commentaries, using the formula zhuan/chuan yue 傳曰 (“the tradition or commentary says”). The slogan “Employ the worthy,” probably first enunciated by the Mohists , is embraced by nearly all the third-century BCE thinkers, as is the notion that “the people are the basis” of stable rule (min ben 民本).
- 12.
Recently, many scholars, following the lead of Li Xueqin 李學勤, have begun making curious arguments about what was and was not possible based on the strong presumption of regional learning. See, e.g., Chen Liangwu 2009 : n. 8.
- 13.
Cf. Lü Simian 1982: 688–89. For one example of inter-textuality, see Hanshi waizhuan 6/14, where two passages in the extant Xunzi are credited to Mencius . (Of course, the lines may be proverbial.) This means that I do not accept the unilinear schema for tracing intellectual developments, contra such authors as Liao Mingchun 1998: 80, where Liao’s dating schema relies on sets of three becoming sets of five over time.
- 14.
I query the existence of the so-called “Jixia Academy ” in pre-Qin times, which many erroneously take to be the source of Qin and Han Learning; I query the existence of discrete “schools” in pre-imperial times, as well as deep divisions between the so-called “New Text/Old Text” adherents in Han classicism. I see little reason to presume the leading role of Dong Zhongshu in Western Han. On the “factoid” of the Jixia Academy , for which the early accounts never use the word xue guan 學官 (“academy”), see Sivin 1995. (The status and function of Jixia is relevant, since Xunzi served as a Libationer at Jixia , which I take to be some sort of official residence.) Loewe has consistently avoided translating Ru 儒 as “Confucian,” and I have reserved the term for such dedicated ethical followers of Confucius as Xunzi (Nylan 2001), while emphasizing the disparate sources of inspiration that most pre-Qin, Qin, and Han thinkers drew from (Nylan 2008). For the dating of the “classical turn” not to the reign of Han Wudi (r. 141–87 BCE) but to the reign of Han Chengdi (r. 33–7 BCE), see Nylan 2011 and Nylan 2015b. Fukui 2005 argues that the number of Academicians was possibly sharply reduced during Wudi’s reign, from around 70 in Qin and early Western Han to only 7; cf. the doubts raised by Loewe 2011 regarding Dong Zhongshu’s role at Han Wudi’s court. Many scholars still assume first, that the Mengzi provided the main inspiration for Dong Zhongshu , and second, that Dong himself was a major influence on Western Han thought.
- 15.
Fukui 2005 set me on this path.
- 16.
One must remember that the Kongzi portrayed in the Analects refused to speak at length about human nature ( Analects 5.12); Xunzi either departed from this tradition or, as I suspect, didn’t know it. Xunzi’s account of qing 情 (“human inclinations”) and xing 性 (“human nature”) apparently was deemed satisfactory for most purposes; the differences between Xunzi’s theory and that of Mencius are not, of course, as the diametrically opposed slogans about human nature would make them seem. Xunzi thought human nature “ugly ,” rather than irretrievably “evil” (contra the usual Christianized rendering in English); see Sahlins 2008 for this important distinction. Shen jian 1995, chapter 4 (“Zayan, shang”), shows that Yang Xiong and Liu Xiang both thought that human natures were “mixed,” in the sense of generated ethically good or bad impulses, depending on circumstances and basic proclivities. Other nice distinctions continued to be worked out, including the pragmatic application of Xunzi’s emphasis on “rule by ritual” under the watchful eye of the thinking ruler of discrimination, who is quite unlike Han Fei’s “empty ruler” who does not himself legislate, but lets the “rule of law” takes it course.
- 17.
The phrase run se 潤色 (“glossy and appealing”) perhaps cites Analects 14.8 (Waley trans.: “give it amplitude and color”; Lau : “make embellishments,” which seems less likely). SJ 61.3166, HS 88.3591 repeat the phrase.
- 18.
See, e.g., Xu Pingzhang 1988 : 127 for the use of this slogan.
- 19.
- 20.
According to Ying Shao , Xunzi lambasted Lord Chunshen in his fu , which took the form of riddles. Li Zehou 2010: 33 emphasizes the way in which Han Confucians used poetry as a means to convey veiled criticism, even satire.
- 21.
The value placed on being tong 通 (“comprehensive”) in analysis rather than piecemeal helps to explain why Eastern Han and post-Han critics did not regard Wang Chong highly. Wang’s essays contradict one another, and they offer no grand theory, aside from arguing that qi 氣 is material (hardly a new idea); hence their failure to rise to the status of texts devoted to tongyi 通義 that aim to find the “comprehensive meaning.” The term qi is frankly untranslatable; for its meanings in the immediate pre-Qin, Qin, and Han periods, see Nylan 2010.
- 22.
For Yang , see Nylan 2011. For Xunzi, see the opening lines to Xunzi, chapter 17 (“Tian lun”), where Xunzi says the “Perfected Man” understands “the division between the activities of heaven and those of mankind.” See WXQ 17.1 (pp. 306–7); HKCS 17/79/21; K III.15. However, the term for “sympathetic resonances” (gan ying 感應) could be applied to certain physiological processes whereby something external to the self stimulates it in such a way as to give rise to “motions” and “reactions” (dong 動 or ying 應). Li Zehou 2010, chapter 3, inexplicably makes Xunzi the precursor to Dong Zhongshu’s “unity of heaven and humans.”
- 23.
As Tjan Tjoe Som 1949: 75, remarks, by the time of the promulgation of the Bohu Conference conclusions (after 79 CE), the idea that “the events of man’s life correspond with the phenomena in the world of nature” had become an article of faith for the dynasty, despite Xunzi’s sharp divide between the cosmic and social realms. For “personal welfare,” see Poo Mu-chou 1998. NB: I do not capitalize “Heaven” when translating tian because Xunzi denies the relevance, and possibly the existence of an anthropomorphic god.
- 24.
Chapter 9 of the extant Xunzi entitled ”“Wang zhi” 王制.
- 25.
The terms for “hegemon” and “[true] king” are ba 霸 and wang 王 respectively.
- 26.
WXQ 9.1–2 (pp. 149–52); HKCS 9/35/3–12; K II.94–95. Knoblock translates yi shan zhi 以善至 as “coming forward with good intentions” but Xunzi is interested in results, in my view, though these are clearly tied to intention. Hutton comments that the shan here can accommodate both intentions and results.
- 27.
WXQ 9.2 (pp. 150–52); HKCS 9/35/14–20; K II.95–96, speaking of what is gong ping 剬平 (“fair and just ”). Here (as elsewhere) Xunzi emphasizes that good judges must extrapolate from the laws “by analogy” (yi lei ju 以類舉) to cases not covered explicitly in the legal code, or miscreants will evade the law.
- 28.
WXQ 9.3 (p. 152); HKCS 9/36/1; K II.96.
- 29.
WXQ 9.3 (p. 152); HKCS 9/36/1–3; K II.96; cf. chapter 17 (“Li lun”), which presents sumptuary laws as one key to effective rule. In chapter 10, esp. sections 10.8–9 (HKCS 10/44/20 – 10/46/4), Xunzi specifically disputes the Mohist belief that material resources are inherently scarce; most relevant is the section translated in K II.127–30.
- 30.
While many are quick to see Mohist influence in all talk of ai min 愛民 (“caring for the people”), these ideas could equally well be ascribed to Mencius or several other thinkers. On the Han blending of Mohist and Confucian ideas, see Wallacker 1978. Other measures are listed in WXQ 9.13 (HKCS 9/38/9–12, K II.101–2), including a taxation rate of 1/10. For the state care of the elderly, see Giele 2006c; for other measures, see the Introduction to Nylan and Vankeerberghen 2015. Henry Rosemont has emphasized this aspect of Xunzi’s views in his “State and Society in the Xunzi” (Rosemont 2000).
- 31.
WXQ 9.5 (p. 153); HKCS 9/36/16–20; K II.98.
- 32.
WXQ 9.6 (p. 154); HKCS 9/36/17; K II.98, which states that hegemons fu shi 富士 (“favor those men-in-service”), while true kings fu min 富民 (“favor their subject populations”).
- 33.
Cf. WXQ 15.1b–c (pp. 266–67); HKCS 15/68/9 – 15/69/19; K II.219–22.
- 34.
WXQ 9.8 (p. 156); HKCS 9/37/6; K II.99. Some texts characterize Xunzi as anti-merchant, but there is little evidence of this, although he knows full well that the vast majority of subjects will be farmers, as is true of all pre-industrial societies. See Crone 1989.
- 35.
WXQ 4.12 (p. 71); HKCS 4/17/3–4; K I.195; cf. ibid. 20.1 (p. 379); HKCS 20/98/14 – 20/99/2; K III.80–81. While one line in chapter 10 speaks of “reducing the numbers of traders and merchants” (WXQ 10.3b (p. 179); HKCS 10/43/6, K II.123) this merely urges an increase in the numbers of farmers, so anti-merchant sentiments do not figure largely in the Xunzi, as we have it.
- 36.
WXQ 9.2 (p. 151) HKCS 9/35/20; K II.96: 治生乎君子.
- 37.
WXQ 9.11 (pp. 158–59); HKCS 9/38/1–3; K II.101, for the term fu gu 復古 (“restore the past”).
- 38.
WXQ 15.6b (p. 290); HKCS 15/74/19; K II.234. At WXQ 9.13 (p. 160); HKCS 9/38/9; K II.101, and at 10.5 (p. 180); HKCS 10/43/19; K II.125, the term used for the masses is wan min 萬民.
- 39.
WXQ 9.14 (p. 162); HKCS 9/38/19; K II.102, for the term da shen 大神 (“greatly divine ”). WXQ 9.15 (p. 163); HKCS 9/39/3; K II.103, identifies the junzi 君子 (either “noble man” or “ruler,” depending on context) as a Third Power with heaven -and-earth (the cosmos), although junzi here almost certainly refers to the “ruler.” For the importance of unity as a function of one standard, even-handed policies, see WXQ 9.16a (p. 164); HKCS 9/39/11–12; K II.104, also WXQ 9.18 (pp. 171–72); HKCS 9/40/18 – 9/41/7; K II.108–9. “Divine ” seems to mean “supremely efficacious” when it refers to rulers and their officials. See fn. 23 above, regarding the use of “Heaven” with or without a capital “H.”
- 40.
On the first point, see WXQ 9.19a (p. 173); HKCS 9/41/9–14; K II.109, which speaks of punitive expeditions manned by loving subjects. On the second point, see Xunzi 9.19c (p. 174); HKCS 9/42/5; K II.111, which speaks of “using [the people] unto death.”
- 41.
WXQ 15 (passim). Cf. ibid. 4.12 (p. 71); HKCS 4/17/3–4; K I.195.
- 42.
Analects 2.4 had spoken of “following the heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of right.” The term translated as “appropriate” is yi 義 . Eric Hutton 2000, esp. p. 223, argues against the idea that it is the mere capacity for knowing and doing yi that makes humans superior to animals . Wong 2000 overstates the role desires play in Xunzi’s vision, assuming also that “There is nothing in our nature that Xunzi thinks can be called good” (Wong 2000: 135), and second, that the inborn nature includes “the self-seeking tendency to satisfy the desires” (ibid). However, he writes, “[I]t is quite plausible that we do have feelings that are congenial to morality even if they aren’t moral feelings” (Wong 2000: 150), which seems to contradict his earlier statement. Finally, he resolves the issue, saying, “Human nature is not evil because it contains nothing but selfish desire and feeling. It is evil because these kinds of desire and feeling dominate in conditions of insecurity and lack of order” (ibid, italics in original).
- 43.
WXQ 9.16a (p. 164); HKCS 9/39/11–13; K II.104. Behuniak 2000 places equal stress on fen , but there are other problems; for example, I believe he is wrong to assume that the rituals of which Xunzi speaks are one or more books entitled Rituals .
- 44.
See WXQ 9.17 (pp. 166–71); HKCS 9/40/1–16; K II.106–8, for the xu guan 序官 (“order of officers”).
- 45.
For Mencius , see Mencius 7B35 for the desirability of reducing the desires (養心莫善于寡欲). Xunzi ascribes this idea to Song Xing (宋子有見於少, WXQ 17.12 (p. 319); HKCS 17/83/4–5; K III.22). See Nylan 2004: 90. Xunzi 4.9 (p. 63); HKCS 4/15/7; K I.191, says that the best and worst of men are “the same” in “only one aspect”: that they “have these desires” (fan ren you suo yi tong 凡人有所一同). Xunzi 27.63 (p. 502); HKCS 27/132/1; K III.222, says that all humans, even sages , possess both a sense of appropriateness and a desire for benefit/profit. Desires are linked to the senses throughout the Xunzi, chapter 11 (“Wang ba”).
- 46.
WXQ 22.5a (p. 428); HKCS 22/111/14; K III.136: qing zhe, xing zhi zhi 情者性之質.
- 47.
For example, the Guodian “Wuxing pian,” section 22, says about cheng : “Only those of the highest integrity in the realm can fully realize their true natures, and only those who can so realize their natures can fully acquire a humane nature” (唯天下至誠為能盡其性; 能盡其性則能盡人之性). Xunzi’s chapter 3 (“Bu gou”) includes a long passage about the importance of cultivating cheng to the completion of one’s endowed human nature (君子養心莫善于誠, WXQ 3.9a–c (p. 46–48); HKCS 3/11/4–12; K I.177–78). Wong 1991: 33 identifies the most important function of the xin as recognizing the salient features of each situation, determining whether it is important to act or not. However, this is hardly the only capacity of the xin. For moral judgment as the capacity to use analogies, as well as focus, see Kim 2014.
- 48.
Xunzi, after all, had no concept like that of Western original sin . Contrast Sahlins 2008. Put another way, the appetites generated by sensory contact, in other words, are not absolutely at war with “higher” impulses toward moral action; they constitute the only groundwork for all thought and action. NB: I do not agree with Van Norden , especially his remarks about the need to engage in the “moral equivalent of war against our desires” in the process of moral cultivation (Van Norden 2000: 127), though some others would.
- 49.
This theme of cheng 誠 (“integrity”) appears often, e.g., in WXQ 17.3 (p. 309); HKCS 17/80/10; K III.16, which describes the “heart that dwells within the core cavity” as the single organ capable of correlating the activities of the senses.
- 50.
Xunzi 3 (passim). For more, see Liang Tao 2002; the key phrase is shen qi du 慎其獨 (either “to be cautious when alone [or in one’s family circle]” or “to be cautious of one’s singularity” (with the latter usage attested in Han texts as well). See WXQ 3.9b (p. 46); HKCS 3/11/7; K I.178.
- 51.
WXQ 9.18 (p. 171); HKCS 9/40/21 – 9/41/1; K II.108: “When a ruler finds himself in the circumstances where the world is coerced by one state’s aggression and he must find alliances with others, doing things he has no desire to do, so that day by day he comes to execute the same policies and commit the same actions as a Jie, this will not prevent his becoming a Yao.” Cf. WXQ 15.1b (p. 267); HKCS 15/68/14; K II.220: “But for a Jie to try to practice deception against a sage like Yao would be like trying to break a rock by throwing eggs at it or trying to stir boiling water with bare fingers.”
- 52.
This list comes from the opening paragraphs of Xunzi, chapter 19 (“Li lun”), which mentions the desires for satisfaction of the senses, for “symbols of trust,” for awesome spectacles, and for safety specifically. See Nylan 2004. Xunzi’s main criticism of Mozi’s teachings is that they do not make sufficient provision to satisfy people’s desires.
- 53.
WXQ 15.5 (p. 287); HKCS 15/74/4–5; K II.232.
- 54.
WXQ 19.3 (p. 357); HKCS 19/92/21; K III.62.
- 55.
WXQ 19.5b (p. 363); HKCS 19/94/8; K III.65.
- 56.
WXQ 19.11 (p. 376); HKCS 19/97/20–22; K III.72.
- 57.
NB: “Mimetic desires” is my own term for what Xunzi describes in the opening passages of his chapter 19, when he has ordinary people wanting to imitate their social betters who have more goods and services at their disposal, and finding that imitation will give them and their families the safety and security they crave.
- 58.
WXQ 19.2c (p. 355); HKCS 19/92/8–10; K III.60–61.
- 59.
WXQ 19.11 (p. 376); HKCS 19/97/22 – 19/98/1; K III.72.
- 60.
This may seem like a great many conditions, but I believe all are necessary; cf. Baier 1992.
- 61.
The current academic fashion viewing such commemorative activities as mere political theater or worse—the cynical manipulation of “those below” by the sociopolitical elites of the early empires—necessarily downplays Xunzi’s achievement.
- 62.
Li Zehou 2010: 13.
- 63.
WXQ 11.4 (pp. 210–11); HKCS 11/52/3; K II.156. No one should take this to mean that Xunzi is a hedonist. See Nylan 2001.
- 64.
- 65.
- 66.
See HS 36.1921–22. Fu Qiubo is also known as Bao Qiuzi 包丘子 or Bao Qiu 鮑丘. Lu Jia 陸賈 and Huan Kuan 桓寬 say he was a student at the same time as Li Si .
- 67.
HS 78.3271.
- 68.
According to An Zuozhang’s reconstruction, the Guliang represents the Lu Learning, opposed by the Qi classicists. However, An’s reconstruction is impossibly neat (and flawed in its assumptions about Modern Script-Archaic Script differences), even if An makes many useful points. Cf. Tjan Tjoe Som , Bo hu tung, Tables 3, 7 (between pp. 86–87). The Zuoshi Chunqiu and the Mao Odes supposedly were represented by Academicians at the court of Liu De 劉德, King of Hejian 河間 (r. 155–129 BCE).
- 69.
- 70.
Lu Deming [1873] 1983: “Shulu” 敘祿. But see above. For a convenient chart of lines of filiation posited in early works, see Xu Pingzhang 1988: 119–20.
- 71.
Riegel 1997. Cf. WXQ 27.92 (p. 511); HKCS 27/135/7–8; K III.230.
- 72.
An Zuozhang 2001 remarks, in section 2, that by mid-Western Han times, these location markers (Qi vs. Lu) no longer had much correlation with the places of origin of the followers. The standard narrative makes Liu Xiang a Guliang proponent, in contrast to Liu Xin (advocate of the Zuozhuan ), but Liu Xiang’s several compilations seem to use the Zuo . For Yin Gengshi and the Shen Pei-Guliang connection, see HS 88.3617–18; for the Zuo , see above (on Zhang Cang and Jia Yi ). Another possible tie is the court of Liu De 劉德, King of Hejian, who was allegedly an early collector of texts relating to rites and music , but too little is known.
- 73.
HS 88.3617 shows the Odes and Guliang being taught together in Lu continuously from the time of Shen Pei. HS 88.3617–18 makes it equally likely that Xunzi influenced Dong Zhongshu’s reading of the Gongyang (hardly an impossibility, given Dong’s interest in jurisprudence).
- 74.
Every reformer who weighed in on the subject of the suburban sacrifices under Chengdi (r. 33–7 BCE) was a student of Hou Cang, including Kuang himself, Yi Feng 翼奉, and Xiao Wangzhi 蕭望之. See fns. 79, 89.
- 75.
- 76.
We do not know how much Xunzi accepted certain cosmological constructions of his time concerning the sympathetic laws of attraction threading through the universe, but we do know that chapters 5 and 17 of the extant Xunzi deny that important cosmological connections between heaven and the people exist. Moreover, Xunzi, like Kongzi before him, was mainly preoccupied with events in the sociopolitical realm. In support of this point, I would add that the Changes is hardly mentioned in the Xunzi, there being only two direct quotations from the Changes , and three (or possibly four) other references to it. Moreover, a number of these quotes and references occur in chapter 27, which is generally regarded as having a weaker claim to represent Xunzi’s views. Notably, Xunzi does not identify the Changes as a Classic, unlike the Odes and Documents.
- 77.
Yantie lun 1994: 4.3/24/21, for example, disassociates Xunzi from Li Si , by showing how shabbily Li treated Xunzi and a student of his; similarly, Xinxu 1992 shows Xunzi reproving Li Si ; and Yang Xiong (a fierce critic of the Qin) in Fayan 12.5 calls Xunzi a true Confucian (“a different door in the same gate” [with Kongzi ]), meaning his teachings and example proved good entryways to Kongzi himself. The Xunzi itself contains a story of Xunzi upbraiding Li Si that serves as a parallel to the Xinxu story; see WXQ 15.3; HKCS 15/72/1–7; K II.228–29.
- 78.
E.g., Yan Kejun 1883: 3/3b. See below.
- 79.
See, e.g., SJ 96.2675–76, for the term shu 數 (“regularities”). HS 88.3620 shows the close ties between the late Western Han reformers and students of Zhang Cang .
- 80.
- 81.
HS 73.3101.
- 82.
See fn. 77 for the Han treatment of Xunzi’s association with Li Si , Han Fei , and the First Emperor of Qin.
- 83.
This continues in Six Dynasties, as we see from Dominik Declercq 1998, writing on she lun 設論 (“hypothetical discourses”), which tend to air grievances.
- 84.
Nylan 2008.
- 85.
Nylan 2005.
- 86.
Fukui 1988, focuses particularly on several court appointments thought to lead to high office.
- 87.
Fukui 1988: 275.
- 88.
- 89.
Hence the organization of an imperial library under Chengdi and the later placement of several altars in the capital area. The first is the subject of Nylan 2011; the second, that of Tian Tian 2015. One can see Liu Xin’s harsh “Letter about the Academicians” in this light as well. The standard view doubtless is based on Yantie lun’s depiction of the wenxue, as opposed to the strong reach of the centralized state. Loewe has queried the reliability and dating of the Yantie lun, calling it an “exercise” in rhetoric, rather than a transcription of the debates.
- 90.
However, the vast majority of the archaeological evidence dates to those two centuries.
- 91.
Ma Jigao 2002: 181–82, suggests that all the parts of the Lüshi chunqiu that concerned cultivation of one’s physical person, employment of the worthy, musical education came from Xunzi, whereas calls for frugality came from the Mohists , and other separate strands from others. I do not think the ideas in the text can be sourced so neatly.
- 92.
Probably this was true in Qin as well, given the six stele inscriptions erected by Qin Shihuang, but for Qin we have only a few tantalizing bits of evidence. What is abundantly clear from the evidence, literary and archaeological: the most forceful backlash against the Qin did not happen under Han Gaozu (r. 206–195 BCE), but in late Western Han, as a way of indirectly criticizing policies associated with Han Wudi (r. 141–87 BCE).
- 93.
Cai Yong’s 蔡邕 Duduan 獨斷 (title meaning disputed, comp. ca. 175) shows the importance of court conference and court advisors. Giele 2006a explicates the text, paying special attention to the particular forms the necessary channels of communications took in Han: petitions, memorials, presentations, the findings of court conferences, and dissents were duly registered with the throne, which, in return, publicized its wishes through edicts, instructions, appointment letters, and formal admonitions. The opening paragraphs of the HHS “Ru lin zhuan,” also show Guangwu and Mingdi performing for their court the role of “true king ” in charge of the propagation of culture and moral reform.
- 94.
See SJ 78.2396; 87.2539, the biographies of Li Si and Lord Chunshen, which credit Xunzi with knowing the diwang zhi shu 帝王之術 (“arts of true emperors and kings”). That Xunzi had a large group of disciples is also implied in Yantie lun 4.3/25/14.
- 95.
I regret to say that Wu Hung, Martin Powers, and Anthony Barbieri-Low all refuse to accept the evidence that sumptuary regulations were routinely enforced, at least in urban centers.
- 96.
Zhang Xiangyu, Wang Xiaomeng, and others (personal communications); for one example of an outlying kingdom, see the Eastern Han tomb of a prince near Ji’nan (Rencheng). The term for jue 爵 is now translated “orders of honor,” rather than “noble ranks,” though it includes two noble ranks.
- 97.
Giele 2005.
- 98.
Generally speaking, according to Crone 1989: 45, early empires sought only to (1) collect taxes; (2) maintain internal security; (3) maintain external defense. In Crone’s view, it is typically only industrial societies that aim to (4) educate subjects; (5) assign jobs; (6) give out money; (7) protect the environment; (8) organize sport and entertainment; (9) maintain public health; and (10) provide some services to the weak, orphaned, and old. Crone (ibid.) says, “The ideology that depicted him as an autocrat more often than not was designed to compensate for his lack of power.”
- 99.
See concluding section of WXQ 21.10 (pp. 409–10); HKCS 21/107/14–16; K III.111–12.
- 100.
Adshead 2004: 47 (said of Tang but applicable to Han). Adshead knows that many constitutions are unwritten.
- 101.
Fukui 1988 gives one of the best accounts of this system of recruitment and promotion.
- 102.
- 103.
Hsing I-t’ien 1987: 333–409, has done extensive work on precedents; Hulsewé and Loewe have been the leading scholars for the laws, including those mentioned in the newly excavated Shuihudi and Zhangjiashan finds. Wudi was known for his autocratic behavior, however.
- 104.
Fukui 1988.
- 105.
WXQ 9.17 (p. 171); HKCS 9/40/15–16; K II.108; cf. WXQ 9.19d (p. 174); HKCS 9/42/6–7; K II.111.
- 106.
HS 23.1102. See Hulsewé 1955: fns. 5–6, 11, 62–63, 65, 67, 74, 76, 316, 318, 320–22. The HS biography of Lu Wenshu 路溫舒 (dubbed by Hulsewé a virtual “Appendix” to HS 23) continues the citations from Xunzi, in describing the people’s inclinations. See Hulsewé 1955: 425. Hutton 2006 explains the necessity in Xunzi’s ideal world for wise rulers to set up good institutions, so as to form people’s characters.
- 107.
See, for example, the memorial by Gu Yong 谷永, dated to 12 BCE, which is discussed in Nylan and Vankeerberghen 2015: 293–322.
- 108.
WXQ 27.52 (pp. 498–99); HKCS 27/130/24 – 27/131/1; K III.219. NB: the local community ritual centers (xiang 庠 and xu 序) mentioned in Mencius 3A5 are not “schools” in the modern sense, contra centuries of Neo-Confucian teaching.
- 109.
Xunzi, like others of his age, had no conception of an abstract “economy ,” let alone “the market”—a point made long ago by M.I. Finley for classical Greece and Rome, but which tends to be ignored by modern economists in China (e.g., Ye Shichang 2004), who conflate Xunzi’s ideas with those of the modern [construction of] “economic man” bent on the pursuit of profit above all.
- 110.
Chao Cuo, cited in HS 24A: 1130. It is doubtful, however, that Xunzi would have approved of Chao’s solution to the problem (the selling of orders of honor in return for grain, possession of which would allow the possessor to use his rank to redeem his crimes).
- 111.
Sima Qian as a historian certainly follows Xunzi in his relentless focus on the human, rather than the cosmic. For further information, see Marsili 2011; SJ 129.3253–54.
- 112.
For Wudi, see HS 24B/10b; for Wang Mang, see HS 24A/19b; Swann trans. 208; cf. HS 24B/6b, 8a (Swann trans. 245, 253).
- 113.
HS 24B/11b; Swann trans. 275. WXQ 9.17 (pp. 106–8); HKCS 9/40/1–16; K II.106, specifically allows for the people to use the products of these places to supplement their incomes. The excuse for an emperor to appropriate the products is that otherwise those shifty merchants will control resources and use them to “enslave and make profits from the humble folk.” Some may argue that Xunzi, in the beginning of chapter 24, cites the Odes ’ lines “There is no land but the Kings’ land . . . and no subjects not the king’s subjects,” taking this to permit an overlord to take any action, but that is not how the Odes’ line is read in any early citations.
- 114.
Xunzi’s term for “conscious activity” is wei 偽 , which also means “artifice.”
- 115.
See Xunzi WXQ 12.3 (pp. 232–33); HKCS 12/57/26; K II.178, for cong 從 (“obedience,” “conformity”). The beginning sections of chapter 29 also provide a good illustration of this.
- 116.
- 117.
HS 23.1079. The phrase is 時唯孫卿明於王道.
- 118.
See Hulsewé 1955: 311, who notes that there are both direct and indirect quotations of Xunzi’s writings, as well as extracts and summaries. Aside from the Xunzi, most citations come from the Zhouli (8 identified by H.), Documents (6 identified), Analects (12 identified), and Zuozhuan (4 identified). Granet 1934: 462–63, believed that the Hanshu “Treatise on Penal Laws,” in combining the two topics of punitive campaigns against outside parties and domestic punishments, saw both as the hegemon’s prerogatives. For the “Confucianization” of the law, see Dull 1978; Elvin 1984. (The term is more aptly applied to late imperial China, however.)
- 119.
Compare the opening passage in HS 23 with WXQ 9.16a (pp. 164–65); HKCS 9/39/9–18; K II.103–5, which gives the chief reasons why people are superior to the birds and beasts , despite lacking sharp claws and teeth: their ability to form groups, to apportion scarce goods in order to avoid pitched battles, and to entrust certain tasks to their appointed rulers. Mention of a well-field system ( Mencius 3A3) is tied to the institution of a military tax. HS 23.1085 likens the people’s love for the ruler to the “fragrance of orchids” (a metaphor from the Xunzi), before repeating a long passage from WXQ 15.1d (pp. 271–74); HKCS 15/69/21 – 15/70/10; K II.222–23. According to Liu Xiang’s authoritative Bielu, Dong Zhongshu supposedly “praised Minister Sun (i.e., Xunzi) in the books he compiled,” but this is not clear from the writings we have ascribed to Dong today, aside from Dong’s legal judgments.
- 120.
HS 23.1099; HS 42.2093.
- 121.
Jia Yi also put much stock in selecting proper tutors for the imperial heir, while mandating elite ritual performances (two policies consonant with Xunzi’s teachings). Jia Yi’s account in Xinshu 8.5/60/10–12 of the relation between qi 氣, godlike perspicacity, and decorous form sounds very much like that found in the Xunzi. Jia Yi apparently borrowed the phrase li bu ji shuren, xing bu zhi junzi 禮不及庶人, 刑不至君子 (“The rites do not go down to the commoners, nor the punishments up to gentlemen”) from Xunzi, whose chapter 10 (“Fuguo”) has parallels in Jia</Emphasis> Yi’s Xinshu chapter 2.5 (“Jieji”); cf. Liji , chapter 1 (“Quli,” A).
- 122.
Xunzi is cited in Qian Hanji, chapter 24 (for Chengdi’s reign, year 33 BCE), as decrying as falsehoods the old legends that deny the use of mutilating punishments by the sage-rulers of the halcyon Three Dynasties (Xia-Shang-Zhou) periods.
- 123.
HS 23.22a.
- 124.
On these, see McKnight 1981.
- 125.
A CHANT search of all Han and pre-Han texts (excluding Chunqiu fanlu, since most of it postdates Han, in my view) shows that while specific people are described (not often) as having either good or bad natures, and some texts describe how to improve people’s basic natures (e.g., HNZ 8), no text accepts Mencius’ basic portrait of human nature. I regard Chunqiu fanlu, chapter 10.1 (“Shen cha minghao” section) as probably post-Han; for Han, see Wang Chong’s Lunheng, chapter 13 (“Ben xing”), and Xun Yue’s Shen jian, chapter 5 (“Zayan, xia”). In making this point, I depart from the main thrust of Xu Pingzhang’s 1988 work, devoted to discussions of human nature.
- 126.
As when the Hanshi waizhuan 5/17 specifically refutes Mencius’ contention, arguing that even those with the best natures need an arduous course of study , whereby they are gradually led, via the helpful intervention of sage kings and teachers , “to become a person.”
- 127.
See Zhao 2014.
- 128.
Morley 2010: 32 ff.
- 129.
The editor and I (along with some others) must agree to disagree regarding both the implications and the possibility of developing a second nature (also called xing) in Xunzi’s thought, when that second nature has fundamentally different inclinations than the original nature. See Arbuckle 2003, on the phrase huaxing qi wei 化性起偽 (which A. translates as “transform the natural tendency and inspire conscious effort ”). In addition, WXQ 22.1a–b (p. 412); HKCS 22/107/22–23; K III.127 gives two definitions for xing, the first being “the endowment at birth,” and the second: “the xing’s harmonious accord with that endowment at birth; the perceptive sympathetic responses, at which it does not work, but which are so of itself.” The commentary emphasizes the positive associations of the second type of xing; moreover, it is hard to see how the inborn nature can be in accord with itself (as would be true if both definitions of xing refer to the same “inborn nature”), in descriptions of the good person or sage. Nor does it seem likely that the second xing can refer to the original nature, if it describes something that “without working at it” chooses to act in appropriate ways. (Trans. differs from K III.127.) [Editor’s note: contrast Tang Siufu’s account of these definitions in his contribution to this volume.]
- 130.
See fn. 125.
- 131.
Even Yang Xiong , Mencius’ self-proclaimed champion, calls Xunzi a door. See Fayan 2.19, 6.4, 12.5, or Fengsu tongyi, chapter 7; and Xu Gan 徐幹 , in Makeham 2002: xxx. (Xu clearly prefers Xunzi to Mencius , as shown by Makeham 2002: xxxiii.) SJ 121.3116 couples their names, and they are, of course, put into the same biographical chapter in that work; HS 88.3591 repeats it. Ban Gu ’s “Treatise on Men, Past and Present” (“Gu jin ren biao”) lists in chronological order a total of fifteen worthies from the time of Kongzi (the only person ranked a sage in the period from 771–221 BCE) and both Mencius and Xunzi are included in the list (HS 20.942, 950). Cf. HS 30.1725.
- 132.
The Yantie lun, chapter 4.3 (“Hui xue”), for example, seems intent on disassociating Xunzi from famous Qin figures, as is ibid. 2.5 (“Lun Ru”). Another exception is the Lienü zhuan, but its portrait of Mencius is far from flattering.
- 133.
In no case are whole paragraphs lifted from the Mencius in Han treatments of ritual or law, as was done with the Xunzi. So far as I know, neither Mencius nor Xunzi is explicitly cited as authority in court discussions, e.g., White Tiger Discussions (Bohu tong 白虎通 ), presumably because neither master penned a Classic, but the most famous of the three rites Classics, the Rites Record or Liji is said to derive from Xunzi’s followers (see above). Moreover, the Bohu tong invokes Xunzi’s teachings in specific statements (e.g., Xunzi’s statement [mod.] about applying the rituals to improve those of superior status, but punishments for the commoners 由士以上則必以禮樂節之, 眾庶百姓則必以法數制之, WXQ 10.3a (p. 178); HKCS 10/43/2–3, K II.123), and its treatment of certain topics, including sumptuary regulations.
- 134.
Mencius’ mother is a popular theme in Han literature, and such stories register criticism of Mencius -the-child as a less-than-eager learner, and of Mencius -the-adult for being a less-than-ideal husband. Wang Chong devotes a whole chapter to criticizing Mencius ; see Lunheng, chapter 30 (“Ci Meng”), though some might regard that as a sign of Mencius’ influence ca. CE 100.
- 135.
For the “baby and the well,” see Mencius 2A6; for Ox Mountain, see ibid. 6A8. Hao ran zhi qi 浩然之氣 ( Mencius 2A2) is cited by Ban Gu in his postface to the Hanshu, and also in Xu Gan’s Preface to the Zhonglun (see Makeham 2002: xxx). I can find no reference to Ox Mountain or the “baby and the well” in the extant Han texts. Jing Fang’s Yijing commentary uses the phrase hao ran zhi Dao 浩然之道 (the “ever-flowing Dao”) in somewhat dissimilar terms.
- 136.
HS 30: 1747–56 testifies to the great loss of the fu written during Han.
- 137.
See Wang Qicai 2009: 32, 195, 246.
- 138.
See Han Yu’s praise of Yang in 14/25a; 11/21a (for championing Mencius ); 14/24b (for keeping free of Huang-Lao thought); for the elegance of his prose and fu (18/7a–7b); etc. Han Yu calls Yang Xiong a “great classicist” (da Ru), one of the few besides Mencius and Xunzi (31/7b).
- 139.
See Wing-Tsit Chan 1967: 289.
- 140.
Michael Loewe 2004: 90.
- 141.
ECT, p. 182, adopts the conventional view. But Xunzi is cited as often as Mencius in many Tang-Song works, e.g., the Jiu Tang shu, where both are mentioned 5 times. Interestingly enough, in some of these quotations, Xunzi’s name continues to precede that of Mencius .
- 142.
Drège 1991, passim.
- 143.
Liu Xiang’s Bie lu, cited in Ma Jigao 2002: 207.
- 144.
At least two synopses of the Xunzi’s main points were made in Tang, the first by Wei</Emphasis Zheng and the second by M<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">a Zong, as noted in the earliest extant commentary to the Xunzi, that by Yang Liang 楊倞 (dated 818). See Yan Lingfeng 1993 , vol. 3: 31–39. We do have Wei’s comments recorded in the Suishu he compiled 629–36, i.e., after Han Yu ’s death, which explicitly place Xunzi in the main line of transmission for classical learning (ibid. 34.999, 75.1705, 77.1752). A welcome addition is the essay on Xu Gan 徐干 by Liu Youming (2014).
- 145.
McMullen 1989: 644.
- 146.
Moreover, no fewer than eleven commentaries and major studies devoted to Xunzi have survived from Northern and Southern Song.
- 147.
Schneider 2012: 157, builds the case that Xunzi’s “world turned topsy-turvy” is the inspiration for poets like Du Fu, cf. Declercq 1998, on the widespread use of Xunzian language in the “hypothetical discourses” favored by the most accomplished men of letters in Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang. Cf. Taiping Yulan 390, for one example of a poem whose source is given as Sun Qingzi 孫卿子 [Xunzi]. See the Jiu Tang shu, “Treatise on Rites and Ceremonies” (“Li yi zhi” 禮儀志), 25.943, 945, for examples of treatises borrowing from Xunzi. Li Quan 李筌 (fl. 8th c.) discusses Xunzi’s all-important theories of human nature in his military classic, the Venus Yang Classic (Taibai yang jing 太白陽經); see Ma Jigao 2002: 231–32. Besides essays that explicitly mention Xunzi, there are others that presume a “Xunzian view of moral education,” e.g., Li E’s 李諤 [d. 591] petition to Sui Wendi’s court (“Petition Regarding the Recommendation of Literary Style” or “Shang shu zeng wen ti”上書正文體); see Chen 2010: 124–31.
- 148.
- 149.
Liu invoked Xunzi over 100 times in his writings. With regard to Liu’s rhetoric: in the letters Han had contrasted “unfeeling” vegetation with fully conscious human qi , in order to prove that only humans had “original qi ,” which conferred special powers of discernment. See Han’s “Letter to Cui Qun” (“Yu Cui Qun shu” 與崔群書) and his “Letter to Wei Zhonghang” (“Yu Wei Zhonghang shu” 與衛中行書) in Han Changli wenji, 3.108–10, 3.113. Liu turned Han’s phrases upside down.
- 150.
Liu Hedong ji, 5.80, 26.442–43; 16.296–97. Note that for Liu, the “Five Constants” referred to forms of social behavior in social relations, not inborn capacities to do good.
- 151.
See Liu Hedong ji, 16.285–92. Cf. Liu’s “On Heaven’s Honors” (“Tian jue lun” 天爵論, comp. ca. 808) essay (ibid. 3.49–51). Unfortunately, only half of Liu’s “On Decisive Punishments” (“Duanxing lun” 斷刑論) survives. Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫, a close friend of Liu Zongyuan, admired Xunzi’s notions also, and so he modeled his own essay “On Heaven ” (“Tian lun” 天論) on the chapter by Xunzi under the same name and also on Liu Zongyuan’s essays, though his essay was less systematic. Lü Wen 呂溫 (d. 811), Liu Zongyuan’s cousin, and Niu Sengru 牛僧孺 are two other famous contemporaries known to approve Xunzi’s “separation of heaven and man.” Lü famously expresses these ideas in his “Inscription on the Ancient Eastern Zhou City” (“Gu Dong Zhou cheng ming” 古東周城銘) and his writings about the Guoyu 國語; Niu, in two essays “In Praise of Loyalty” (“Song zhong” 訟忠) and “No More Talk about Fine or Ugly” (“Shan e wu yu lun” 善惡無餘論). Du Mu’s 杜牧 (803–52) works on human nature also took up the same topic a generation or so later, and Du’s essay against physiognomy recalls that of Xunzi, whom Du called a “great classicist.” Liu Yuxi praised Lü Wen as being like Xunzi; see Lamont 1973–1974: 200 for details.
- 152.
- 153.
WXQ 17.2b (p. 309); HKCS 17/80/7, K III.15. Lamont 1973–1974: 193 says his calculations tend to confirm a decline in interest in omenology long before the “coup de grâce was delivered” by Ouyang Xiu’s Xin Tang shu (comp. 1060). Ibid, pp. 195ff. gives many examples of skeptics, though it does not discount the popularity of fate-calculation literature.
- 154.
McMullen 1989: 604, 623, 652. Han Changli ji, 1.11–13. Du’s systematizing impulses shape his Comprehensive Standards (Tongdian 通典) and Zuozhuan commentary. Besides the Neo-Confucians of the True Way Learning school, Xunzi came under fire from the Sus and from Wang Anshi 王安石 (d. 1086), always for his view of human nature.
- 155.
“Du Xun” 讀荀 is in Han Changli ji 1.20. They also forget that Han Yu said “no one in later generations” could compare with the Duke of Zhou, implying that Kongzi was a lesser sage himself (ibid., 1.14).
- 156.
WXQ, p. 51. Yang further claims that it is thanks to Mencius and Xunzi that the way of Kongzi “ultimately did not fall,” despite the onslaughts against it (ibid.).
- 157.
See “Xin dao tang ji” 信道堂記 in Sun 2002: 1/35a–36a.
- 158.
Li Hua mentioned the Erya, the Zuozhuan , and the Guoyu as important props for the Classics.
- 159.
[Editor’s note: here “this culture” means something more than just any culture, but is rather a “precious and superior” culture.]
- 160.
Cf. Declercq 1998: 321, citing Jinshu 92.2369–70, which says Xunzi was faithful “to a distant past.”
- 161.
Yang Liang , Preface, cited in WXQ, p. 51. The term yi duan 異端 in this period seldom means “unorthodox” or “heretical” teachings, though that is the standard definition for the term in late imperial China.
- 162.
During Han and later periods, the problem of the pre-Qin “archaic script” looked large, when the reconstruction of early texts was at issue; see Nylan 2011; Hanke 2002. Throughout Yang ’s commentary there are numerous references to the manuscripts he worked from, some of which had chuan xie 傳寫 (“copyist errors”). See, e.g., WXQ, juan 1, p. 9. Thus one can hardly believe that the Xunzi text had virtually disappeared by Yang’s time. In addition, the term haoshi zhe 好事者 would probably have constituted no small number of people at court, judging from the term’s use in earlier eras.
- 163.
Xunzi 1, Yang Liang , in WXQ, p. 7. I am currently writing a paper discussing the term shen ming, having given an unpublished paper on that topic (“What is God For? An essay in the constitutive imagination of pre-Buddhist China”) for the Yale conference on “Materiality and Transcendence” (April 2013).
- 164.
See CHANT/ICS Concordance series for the phrase xing e 性惡 . For example, several people say of themselves that their own nature is flawed, but they do not describe general human nature in these terms.
- 165.
Liang Qichao 1989: 57.
- 166.
Nylan 2008.
- 167.
Li Zehou 2010 rpt. of earlier work. At the same time, Li’s understanding of Xunzi, as a thinker who merely wants to “rein in and govern sensuous human desires and natural instincts” (p. 65), misses an important part of Xunzi’s argument relating to aesthetic satisfaction. Li ties Xunzi to Dong Zhongshu, though Xunzi did not argue for a “correspondence between heaven and humans (the similarity and affinity of nature, the seasons, politics, the body, society, the emotions, and so on)” (p. 71).
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Nylan, M. (2016). Xunzi: An Early Reception History, Han Through Tang. 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_14
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