What did Xunzi support?

What did Xunzi support?

Despite his departure from a formative Confucian doctrine, Xunzi was a devoted follower of Confucius. He laid great stress on education, self-cultivation, statecraft, and formal ritual. His theory of ritual, in particular, was one of his great contributions to Chinese thought.

What is Xunzi known for?

314 – c. 217 BCE), also widely known as Xunzi (Chinese: 荀子; pinyin: Xúnzǐ; Wade–Giles: Hsün-tzu, “Master Xun”), was a Chinese Confucian philosopher and writer who lived during the Warring States period and contributed to the Hundred Schools of Thought. A book known as the Xunzi is traditionally attributed to him.

What is Mencius philosophy?

Mencius holds that all humans have innate but incipient tendencies toward benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and propriety. Employing an agricultural metaphor, he refers to these tendencies as “sprouts” (2A6). The sprouts are manifested in cognitive and emotional reactions characteristic of the virtues.

What was Confucius most important philosophy?

Confucius was a philosopher and teacher who lived from 551 to 479 B.C.E. His thoughts on ethics, good behavior, and moral character were written down by his disciples in several books, the most important being the Lunyu. Confucianism believes in ancestor worship and human-centered virtues for living a peaceful life.

What did MOZI believe?

Mozi believed that people were capable of changing their circumstances and directing their own lives. They could do this by applying their senses to observing the world, judging objects and events by their causes, their functions, and their historical bases.

What did xunzi teach?

Xunzi’s most famous dictum is that “the nature of man is evil; his goodness is only acquired training.” What Xunzi preached was thus essentially a philosophy of culture. Human nature at birth, he maintained, consists of instinctual drives which, left to themselves, are selfish, anarchic, and antisocial.

What are the main areas of difference between Mencius and xunzi?

While Mencius thinks that the heart/mind has a morally good natural tendency, Xunzi thinks that the heart/mind has a morally problematic tendency. One major debate in pre-Qin Chinese thought concerns whether human nature is good.

What are the four beginnings of Confucian tradition?

That the four beginnings (siduan)—the feeling of commiseration, the feeling of shame, the feeling of courtesy, and the feeling of right and wrong—are all inborn in man was a self-evident truth to Mencius; and the “four beginnings,” when properly cultivated, will develop into the four cardinal virtues of ren.

What are the four shoots that Mencius describes?

Mencius Sprout. Humans are born with four sprouts or seeds [“concern for others”, sense of shame, “sense of humility,” and “sense of right and wrong”(2A:6)] that will develop into four virtues (jen, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom) unless the organic process of development does not proceed.

What are the themes of Mencius and Xunzi?

Mencius themes moral power (de) & moral development human goodness & moral potential virtues-4 sprouts self cultivation mencius goodness of human nature potential to become noble person bc four sprouts of virtue if cultivated properly, grow into full/proper virtues no human lacking in tendency to do good mencius explanations for moral failure

What kind of philosophy did Mencius write about?

Mencius’ views of the divine, political organization, human nature, and the path toward personal development all start and end in the heart-mind. Mencius’ philosophical concerns, while scattered across the seven books of the text that bears his name, demonstrate a high degree of consistency unusual in early Chinese philosophical writing.

What was the common problem that Confucians hoped to solve?

It was a brutal and turbulent era, which nonetheless gave rise to many brilliant philosophical movements, including the Confucian tradition of which Mencius was a foremost representative. The common intellectual and political problem that Warring States thinkers hoped to solve was the problem of China’s unification.

What kind of problems did Mencius inherit from Confucius?

The Mencius of the Text Mencius inherits from Confucius a set of terms and a series of problems.