Xunzi

Recall...

Question: Why evil? How does it originate?

Our first set of sources for this discussion:

Mengzi and Xunzi

Mengzi's account of innate virtue

Virtues are dispositions to have the right kind of emotional responses in certain situations.

There are four virtues:

1. Benevolence: right compassion
2. Rightiousness: right disdain/shame
3. Wisdom: right approval/disapproval
4. Propriety: right respect

We're not born with virtue

But we're born with “sprouts” that develop into virtue.

The sprouts are our natural tendencies to feel compassion, shame, approval, and respect.

We develop them into virtue by extension: the insight that a feeling appropriate to one situation is also appropriate to another analogous situation

Extension is not automatic.

It requires reflection.

Refection requires effort and the right conditions.

But the same is true of other things that might be said to be part of our nature: the ability to run long distances, for example.

Xunzi

The basic picture

Human nature is evil.

How?

All humans are born with both emotions and desires that lead to wrongful behavior.

Desires

1. A fondness for profit
2. A fondness for sensual pleasure (delicious flavors, pleasure and ease)

These desires tend to lead us towards a selfish and lazy way of life (or at least cause us to view such a life as attractive).

Emotions

1. Envy
2. Hate

These emotions conflict with humility and peacefulness.

All of these are instinctive and spontaneous. We have them initially, and if nothing is done to contain them, then we'll continue to have them.

Question

What's to be done?

It's crucial to answer this question - remember, Xunzi and Mengzi are looking at ethics as a guide to social policy.

Answer

Transformation of human nature through ritual.

A warped piece of wood must wait until it has been laid against the straightening board, steamed, and forced into shape before it can become straight; a piece of blunt metal must wait until it has been whetted on a grindstone before it can become sharp.

Roughly, the process of moral education exists to correct our evil nature.

Without this process, "feral" human beings will inevitably develop into criminals, incapable of living productively in society with one another.

Questions and Objections

What about the sprouts?

We've got some good tendencies too.

Xunzi might say:

That's not enough to make you good.

“As soon as [a human] is born, [it] begins to depart from its natural naïveté and simplicity”

The tendencies that naturally dominate are the bad ones.

What about our potential?

Xunzi might say:

When Megnzi talks about “extending” our innate virtues, he's fundamentally mixing two things up.

On the one hand, there's our nature: what is spontaneous, and common to all of us.

On the other hand, there's the product of conscious activity.

Mengzi admits that virtue is not spontaneous.

It requires

1. Basic health and safety
2. Good role models, and socialization
3. Effort in reflection

And clearly it is not common to all of us.

A robber and a gentleman have the same nature, after all.

Furthermore, some nations are orderly and good, other nations are dangerous and chaotic. If virtue was an outgrowth of human nature, then you would have virtue everywhere, but you don't.

So, according to Xunzi:

When we see virtue, it's not the result our common nature.

It's the result of something that's found in some places but not in others.

That thing is ritual: good moral education, a conscious activity.

Mengzi sneaks this in, as just a condition of the development of our natures.

But actually it's the source of virtue.

If virtue isn't in our nature, then where do these virtuous rituals come from?

They were developed in the same way as anything else that we've invented: the gathering together of ideas, and experiments (with different types of laws and regulations).

But how could bad people develop these virtuous rituals?

(Response on behalf of Xunzi - not actually what he would say)

Even for selfish and lazy people, it would probably be desirable to have somewhat less selfish and lazy people around.

Once basic means of human improvement are established, the slightly improved people might then have an interest, both practical and moral, in improving people further.

And so we get a "virtuous feedback loop" that allows a bad population to turn into a good one over time.