Nice post Manyul.
Xunzi seems in general to dislike the tendencies of thought A. C. Graham dates to the end of 4th century BCE: namely Song Xing (“the essential desires are few”) and Yang Zhu (the importance, and perhaps even the moral significance of spontaneous, genuine inclinations rooted in human nature). On these points Mencius agreed with Song Xing and Yang Zhu, and my impression is that that’s why he disliked Mencius.
Another possible reason is the attitude towards Heaven? Here’s my crude understanding on this score. Mencius: we should serve Heaven by developing our nature. Xunzi: we form equal partners with Heaven (which generates things) and earth (which provides resources), each with their own work to do (our work is to establish social order through wei.
I’ve just started thinking seriously about the possible similarities/contrast between Xunzi and Mencius. It is indeed puzzling whether they actually agreed or disagreed on human nature, and I look forward to listening in on the conversations on this.
Comment by Boram Lee | April 21, 2008
Sorry for the inappropriate winky smiley face.
Comment by Boram Lee | April 21, 2008
Interesting, Boram. I’ll think about that. (Boram, two hours a week is 17+ minutes a day.)
Manyul, I’m not sure what to think about these things yet, but I have a couple of sprouts of thoughts.
Xunzi is attacking certain of Mencius’ sayings (presumably these were among Mencius’ most famous sayings). That isn’t quite the same as attacking Mencius’ beliefs!
Maybe Xunzi had something like the Mencius book we have, or something that presented similar interpretive difficulties. (So far as I know, we don’t have a report that Mencius had a follower who he felt understood him well.) Xunzi might well have attacked a few famous sayings and the views they suggest, without having had an opinion about what Mencius thought. Xunzi might have been more concerned about the sayings than about Mencius, just as Mencius may have been more concerned about popular Mohism than about Mozi or the Mozi.
Incidentally, in 6A6 Mencius uses ke 可 and neng 能 in ways that seem to line up with Xunzi’s use in the quoted passage.
乃若其情，則可以為善矣，乃所謂善也。
“As far as what is genuinely in him is conerned, a man is capable of [ ke 可 ] becoming good. That is what I mean by good.” (Lau)
或相倍蓰而無算者，不能盡其才者也。
“There are cases where one man is twice, five times or countless times better than another man, but this is only because there are people who fail to [ bu neng 不能 ] make the best of their native endowment.” (Lau)
(Mencius seems to use neng rather differently in 1A7; but one of the most salient features of the Mencius, I think, is that Mencius seems very casual and flexible in his use of terms.)
Comment by Bill Haines | April 22, 2008
Bill, thanks for pointing out 6A6’s use of ke and neng. I don’t much like Lau’s translation of bu neng 不能 as ‘fail to’; it should be more specifically that some people are unable to make best of their cai 才. That distinguishes them from, for example, Xuan of Qi who in 1A7 fails to make best of his benevolence but that is because he will not, bu wei 不為; he mistakenly thinks he is unable to, bu neng 不能.
I think the predominant tendency is to think Xunzi didn’t understand Mencius well enough to see that their views were very similar: humans have the necessary capacities (ke 可, if you will) but such capacities aren’t sufficient; extra work with them is also necessary to give humans the ability (neng 能) to do what is good.
I’m trying to push the idea that Xunzi actually did understand Mencius more or less correctly, that at the core of Mencius’s views about natural endowment and the heart-mind is a radically, maybe hopelessly, optimistic view that the capacities for benevolence, rectitude, ritual propriety, and wisdom are sufficient, if they are allowed their natural direction of development, without interference and without having to work strenuously on their behalf. One shouldn’t “pull at the sprouts” like the farmer of Song. Those who are interfered with are bu neng, unable, but everyone else is like Xuan–they have no real excuse. If that is what Mencius thinks, then Xunzi’s remarks about him are at least directed at a roughly accurate depiction.
Comment by Manyul Im | April 22, 2008
Hi Manyul. I always proofread my comments to make sure they’re unclear.
Actually I understood all that about your project, and would still say what I said, which was directed only to one aspect of the question of the strength of the Xunzi quote as evidence about Mencius’ views.
I agree with you that much of what Mencius says seems to commit him to the minimal-cultivation view. But I’m not sure that the seeming evidence that he rejected this view can be explained away. (I should make that case in a long comment after re-reading your PEW 42.1 article, but I won’t have time in the next few days.) So I think there’s a huge problem of interpretation of the Mencius here. So I think it would make sense for Xunzi to attack certain sayings without having had a view about Mencius’ views. Xunzi could say what he said even if you’re wrong about Mencius’s views and Xunzi wasn’t.
I’m not sure how you’re reading the sentences I quoted from 6A6. Here are two possibilities:
(A)
乃若其情，則可以為善矣，乃所謂善也。
“When I say it is our nature that we are good, I mean it is our nature that we are able to act well.”
或相倍蓰而無算者，不能盡其才者也。
“[Though we are all good,] some are immeasurably better than others. That is because some are more able than others to act well.”
This reading seems to say that even the worst people are “good”, which just means they’re able to act well; only their ability to act well is so subpar that we can casualy call it no ability at all.
(B)
乃若其情，則可以為善矣，乃所謂善也。
“When I say it is our nature that we are good, I mean it is our nature that we are able to become good.”
或相倍蓰而無算者，不能盡其才者也。
“To ‘become good’ is to become able to act well.”
On this reading the distinction between ke 可 and neng 能 is marking a distinction between what Aristotle would call first and second potentials. Ke 可 is the ability to develop the ability that is neng能. But on this reading the first sentence does not obviously disagree with Xunzi, and the second sentence seems false.
Comment by Bill Haines | April 22, 2008
Here’s a better comment on (A) than my comment on it just above:
This reading seems to say that even Jie and Zhou were “good”, and that the difference between the worst and the best of us is in how much we are able to act well: how much of the ability mentioned in the first sentence we have.
On this reading the abilities in the two sentences are of the same kind. But Mencius’ words seem to rule that idea out. For (1) the ability mentioned in the first sentence is a natural gift. But (2) the ability mentioned in the second sentence is an ability to “exhaust one’s gifts,” so presumably it is not included in those gifts.
Comment by Bill Haines | April 22, 2008
Bill, interesting comments. The crucial issue here, in my thinking, is how the natural gifts, or capacities 可, end up enabling 能 a person to be good. I think the answer to that in Mencius lies some place on a continuum between no effort and strenuous effort. The closer it actually is to strenuous effort, the more Mencius’s view is like Xunzi’s. I would place Mencius closer to no effort, with the caveat that people can ruin the transformation of their own capacities, or those of others, into abilities with effort. The default, then, is to become able. Something like a “first-order” effort is the effort someone puts into ruining themselves or others. The effort that Mencius thinks of as required is something like a “second-order” effort: the effort to remove the first-order efforts to ruin people’s natural development. So, I guess in that sense, I think of Mencius’s idea of “effort” to be relevantly different from that of Xunzi’s. (As I write this, I’m starting to wonder if my use of “minimal effort” is misleading and that the first-order, second-order talk is better.)
Comment by Manyul Im | April 24, 2008
You could look at the statements in which Xunzi actually tells us what he thinks Mencius was saying, and at the arguments he presents against Mencius so interpreted. There are three instances; I’ll give them in what I take to be the order Xunzi wrote them. Note that when people claim that Xunzi misunderstood Mencius (which often leads up to the claim that he didn’t really disagree with Mencius that much), they generally focus only on the first of these interpretations of Mencius.
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孟子曰：「人之性善。」 “Mencius says, it is people’s xing to be good.” Xunzi takes this to mean that people will be good if not interfered with, and therefore that if Mencius is right then the sage kings and the rituals and duties are unnecessary. I sometimes argue that MC 6A/2 does imply something like this view, but no one agrees with me, and it’s generally agreed that here Xunzi gets Mencius wrong.
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孟子曰：「人之學者，其性善。」 “Mencius says, people who study/learn, it is their xing to be good.” In other words, correct moral training will result in a good xing. This sounds a lot more like what we expect from Mencius: we can become good through a process of cultivation that does not require disruption or imposition, but rather something like a natural growth, and the result is a good xing. Xunzi disagrees: the sort of training that is required to be good interferes with natural tendencies, so the result is not xing but artifice.
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孟子曰：「今人之性善，將皆失喪其性故[惡]也。」 “Mencius says, now it is people’s xing to be good, but they are apt to lose their xing, so [they are bad].” Substitute “心” for “性” (which I think is a substantive change, but I don’t know if anyone agrees), and you get a view that’s pretty prominent in MC 6A. Xunzi’s counterargument: it’s inevitable that we lose our original simplicity, in fact it’s our xing to separate from our original simplicity, so that’s not what makes the difference between good and bad. (I think this also counts as an argument that it’s not people’s xing to be bad, but that’s another story.)
So: in at least two out of the three statements in which he offers interpretations of Mencius, Xunzi seems to get at least significant parts of the Mencius right, and his arguments set out clear disagreements with what he takes to be Mencius’s view.
Comment by Dan Robins | April 24, 2008
Thanks Manyul.
I’m not quite ready to speak to that main point, but here’s what I have today, to keep the wires humming.
Here’s a proposed paraphrase of an aspect of your paper, as relevant to possible ways of distinguishing varieties of capacity/ability: Mencius is operating with a distinction something like the belief/desire distinction, except that instead of beliefs what he has in mind is expertise about e.g. ritual (expertise that involves what we might call both true beliefs and skill). The four hearts are us the right desires or motivations or emotions, and these are the things that don’t need much effort for development, or need only protective effort. What it is for these to be mere “abilities” or “capacities” rather than virtues is that to yield excellent dispositions or excellent practice they need two or three supplements: they need (a) basic background resources so the hearts stay healthy, (b) expertise so the hearts know how to act on their concerns, and (c) that we ask ourselves the right questions in deliberating. Thus there are at least seven different senses in which someone with the basic heart endowments may have a mere “ability” to be good: what she has may need to be supplemented by (a), by (b), by (c), or by any of the four combinations of those.
The rulers Mencius addresses seem at first glance to have (a), though arguably they rob themselves of social resources by the way they treat people (1B1). It’s a little surprising on this picture that we don’t see Mencius more concerned with giving rulers (b). He certainly tries to help them with (c).
Comment by Bill Haines | April 24, 2008
Oh, now I see the wires were already humming a pretty tune from Dan.
Comment by Bill Haines | April 24, 2008
Hey Dan,
Regarding your #2 above:
- 孟子曰：「人之學者，其性善。」 “Mencius says, people who study/learn, it is their xing to be good.” In other words, correct moral training will result in a good xing. This sounds a lot more like what we expect from Mencius: we can become good through a process of cultivation that does not require disruption or imposition, but rather something like a natural growth, and the result is a good xing. Xunzi disagrees: the sort of training that is required to be good interferes with natural tendencies, so the result is not xing but artifice.
That makes it sounds like the dispute is entirely conceptual: The process of cultivation would be exactly the same for Mencius and Xunzi–probably: studying the histories, rites, poetry, etc. and becoming proficient in ritualized interactions–i.e. the stuff of 學. The only difference would be that Mencius conceptualizes cultivation as non-disruptive (instead, it is expressive or natural outgrowth) while Xunzi conceptualizes exactly the same cultivation as disruptive, or better, as melioratively “interruptive” through artifice. (‘Melioratively’ is a word I just made up because I couldn’t think of anything better; sorry.)
I’ve been more inclined to try to interpret the difference between them as more substantive, having to do with whether a process of cultivation is actually necessary on the account of Mencius that seems plausibly attributable to him. For that I would think of what you point out as #1 to be the paradigm for Mencius’s view. So, I’m confused that you think of #1 as the view people attribute to Mencius when they argue for Xunzi’s misunderstanding of Mencius. It seems to me like all three of the statements by Xunzi you cite are viable candidates for a view attributable to Mencius, that Xunzi correctly understands to be different from his own. If anything, it’s #2, understood in the way you gloss it, that makes Xunzi’s objection to Mencius seem less than substantive and instead to be merely conceptual. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comments.
Comment by Manyul Im | April 25, 2008
Hi Manyul,
I meant that people focus on #1 when they talk about how Xunzi interprets Mencius, and this usually leads them to conclude that Xunzi misinterprets Mencius; sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Xunzi treats the disagreement in #2 as a conceptual one, doesn’t he? He objects to Mencius by setting out what he takes to be the correct way of understanding the distinction between xing and artifice, not by talking about what steps are required for cultivation.
Still—I think there’s a real tendency in the Mencius to present moral improvement as somehow easy for us (and easy because natural, at least some of the time). E.g., 1A/7 (which I think we read pretty similarly, at least on this point) has Mencius saying to just pick up this heart and apply it over there, insisting that this does not raise quesitons of ability. Xunzi certainly would disagree with this, and my #2 should probably be read against the background of that disagreement.
Comment by Dan Robins | April 25, 2008
I have two questions.
Question 1, Manyul, is about your comment #7. I suppose what would qualify something as first-order effort or second-order effort is the person’s aims. My question is this: does Mencius think people engage in an effort to discard their hearts? Or does he just think they do things that have that effect? If it’s just the latter, then maybe there’s something slightly misleading about calling it “effort”, and thus something slightly misleading about saying that what Mencius recommends — the effort to stop doing those things — is “second-order effort”, or effort about effort.
Mencius does sometimes invite us to conceive our wayward actions as self-attacks or as discarding our hearts, but I’ve been assuming he doesn’t mean they’re intentional self-attacks (as the charge that someone is “throwing the baby out with the bath” doesn’t accuse her of deliberately doing so).
Question 2: When we talk about acorns, on the one hand it seems plausible that there is only a “conceptual” difference between saying that the acorn is just a pile of particles that can be pushed in certain directions by the elements and saying that an acorn naturally tends to become a tree. On the other hand, of course different conceptual schemes have different values. The natural-tendency conception can be defended on the grounds of its greater usefulness in important contexts. If acorns weren’t the way they are, the latter conception would not be useful. But how is it exactly that the latter conception (and maybe an even more robustly Aristotelian conception) is so much more useful than the former? I suppose it has to do with conceptual economy and the similarities among many kinds of living thing (and, nowadays, machine). I think the usefulness doesn’t require that it be easy to cultivate oak trees: orchids have natural tendencies too. Maybe it has to do with the point that in cultivating an orchid, one doesn’t input the structure of the thing. Can the difference between Mencius and Xunzi be understood in terms of the need to input some basic structure?
(I’m talking here only about the model of development in the 1999 paper, not assuming that xing means natural tendency as opposed to repertoire of relatively spontaneous action.)
Comment by Bill Haines | April 27, 2008
I wonder where we would be today if Newton had said, “I don’t need to read Euclid, Galileo or Copernicus. I’ll just start all over again by myself.”
There has already been considerable discussion of whether and how Mengzi differs from Xunzi, including analyses of the relevant textual evidence. See, just for starters,
Goldin, Paul. Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi (Open Court, 1999).
Hutton, Eric. “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature.” Pp. 220-36 in Kline and Ivanhoe, Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi (Hackett, 2000).
Munro, Donald. “A Villain in the Xunzi.” Pp. 193-201 in Ivanhoe, Chinese Language, Thought and Culture (Open Court, 1996).
Nivison, David S. “Xunzi on Human Nature.” Pp. 203-13 in The Ways of Confucianism (Open Court, 1996).
And last (and definitely least)
Van Norden, Bryan W. “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency.” Pp. 103-34 in Kline and Ivanhoe, Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi (Hackett, 2000).
Comment by Bryan | May 1, 2008
Bryan, really; I’m no Newton and this isn’t the Principia of anything. It’s just a blog.
Comment by Manyul Im | May 1, 2008
This post has been sticking in my mind, and I’ve just associated it with a debate from linguistics. I don’t know if this will shed any interesting light, but here goes:
In linguistics one of the huge debates is over the extent to which language is innate. Most famously Chomsky and Pinker argue that there is a Universal Grammar (UG) hardwired into our brains, and that the language we hear (or see, for signers) as children is interpreted by the language bits of the brain, which then develops a competence in language using special UG logic.
The other side of the debate is that there is no UG, and children develop language competence using “general cognitive abilities”.
One of the major arguments in this debate is the “poverty of the stimulus”. The UG side claim that there are things we know about language which we are not taught, and which it is impossible to infer just by listening to people and talking to them. For example, we know some sentences are wrong, even though we’re never taught they’re wrong. They say our UG faculty tells us that certain kinds of sentences can’t be right (given the general language conditions). The counter argument is that it’s not impossible to figure out these rules at all, you just need to know that language is rule-bound and that people are communicating – you don’t need a UG.
So, could this be related to what Xunzi and Mengzi are arguing over? There are some differences: everyone acquires a language, not everyone becomes a junzi. A “moral faculty” would be different from UG in that it doesn’t always produce a full competence outcome. But an important similarity is that neither side of the UG debate advocates different treatment of children during language acquisition, just as it seems that Mengzi and Xunzi basically advocate the same kind of treatment for people to help them develop into junzi.
If this kind of concept was what divided them, it would imply that Mengzi imagines a kind of moral faculty, which with no special input can develop a person’s moral quality. Xunzi would be denying that such a thing exists, and saying people learn morality just the same way as they learn to write or be wheelwrights. If the stimulus argument is relevant, it would imply that Mengzi thinks there is not enough evidence in the world for us to learn to be a junzi (but it doesn’t matter, because our moral faculty fills in the gaps); Xunzi thinks that it is possible to learn to be a junzi just by looking at the world, but the world will have to be appropriately organized by instructors, or we’ll learn the wrong thing.
I offer this as an alternative to what Manyul said in comment 7, about putting Xunzi and Mengzi on a continuum – the existence or not of a moral faculty would provide a qualitative difference.
Unfortunately, I haven’t read either text, so this all might be complete baboon gibber.
Comment by Phil Hand | June 18, 2008
Phil,
That’s an interesting analogy. In the mirror-image of your position, I’m not very familiar with the universal grammar views, so I might be responding with gibbon gibber to your baboon gibber. But, here goes. Mencius and Xunzi both think there are “built-in” elements–cognitive and affective abilities–tied to being human, that are at least necessary to moral development. So in that sense I think both of them believe in an analog to universal grammar. The difference between them has always seemed to me at least to revolve around the “default status” of that grammar. Without extraordinary stimulation, would someone develop a language directly from possession of that grammar? A Mencius-linguist would say yes, I think. A Xunzi-linguist would say no, it takes some extraordinary stimulation (“effort” wei 偽). So, switching over to “morality,” Mencius thinks that the built-in human endowment can develop into the correct moral reactions, motivations, and judgments without extraordinary effort (though such effort might be required in certain circumstances to prevent external sources of sabotage). While Xunzi thinks that you can turn those endowments into correct moral reactions, etc only through extraordinary effort. Something like that.
Comment by Manyul Im | June 19, 2008
So, would it be true to say for either or both of them that you can achieve moral development without deliberate teaching? Does Mencius thing that human abilities+natural order (天/天理?) is enough to produce (some) junzis? Or do they think that it is necessary to have input in the form of books or instruction from sages like Yao and Confucius and the Duke of Zhou?
On a related point, do they see becoming a junzi as a qualitative difference, or is everyone spread out on a scale from scoundrel to junzi?
Comment by Phil Hand | June 20, 2008
I don’t know that Mencius or Xunzi thinks deliberate teaching is absolutely necessary. If they did, they both would have the problem of “first” sages–the people who could not have relied on prior teachings because there were none. I’m very sure that each of them thinks the difference is not qualitative; each thinks that the sage and everyone else are of the same kind (tong lei 同纇).
Comment by Manyul Im | June 25, 2008
Manyul, stumbled across your site when attempting to get more information on Mencius 6A6. My own problem is attempting to figure out how “shame” can be inherent, as shame is either related to a feeling after an action is done or thinking about a future action, neither of which a new-born baby can do. Which is related to your topic here. Mencius and Xunzi oppose each other directly. For Xunzi, the universe is chaotic and so is man’s nature. You must force order. For Mencius, the universe is geared towards order and chaos is what you get if you don’t follow it. The old Socrates-Plato debate whether evil is real (Plato), or just man’s ignorance of nature (Socrates). In the 19th century, you might use the terms pessimist-optimist. But either way, Xunzi has a reason for opposing Mencius, his entire outlook on life is different. Hope this adds to the discussion.
Comment by David | October 26, 2009
Hi David,
That’s an interesting problem about shame, one probably usable by pre-Qin Daoists against Mencians.
I think with Mencius and Xunzi, just how directly they oppose each other will depend on framing. As you put it, you either have to force order (Xunzi) on the universe or you follow the order that is already there (Mencius). On a different framing, perhaps a more “pragmatic” one, which was the one I had in mind in this post, their differences aren’t so stark:
If we take Mencius to require some relatively high level of dedication and effort in order for people to cultivate themselves, and hence to “follow the order that is already there,” then in both of his case and Xunzi’s, here’s the important thing: it takes lots of dedication and effort to end up acting, feeling, and thinking in an orderly, non-chaotic way. On that framing, what does it matter whether such effort is in the service of “forcing order on the universe” or “restoring order to the universe”? It seems irrelevant on a very important pragmatic level.
That is premised on supposing that Mencius does require a high level of dedication and effort. (One could question that about Mencius.) Xunzi himself attributes this premise to Mencius and uses it — effectively, it seems to me — to argue that there is something perverse about a conception of xing, such as Mencius has, on which it is actually more difficult to follow or carry through one’s xing than it is to fall away from it.
Comment by Manyul Im | October 26, 2009
Maybe on a pragmatic level, depending on what your goal is, but I think this goes against what Mencius says. In referring to Gaozi and the willow tree wanting to make cups and bowls, this would seem to fit in with your “pragmaticism” argument. But as history showed, Xunzi’s philosophy led to legalism and again was a forcing of morality on people that lasted only shortly, and resulted in much evil and destruction. People should not be forced into order, but should naturally want it. Instead of using a stick to get order, you use the carrot. If you remember I worked in a prison for 13 years, you might understand where I am coming from. I always had a good time watching new guards come in and try and force the inmates to be good…it seldom worked and they often got the opposite of what they wanted–rioting and chaos.
In my own case, I work harder if I enjoy what I’m doing and as Mencius believed that virtue and joy (le) went together, I think this is almost the opposite of what Xunzi was proposing. Goals can be the same, but the road to get there is where the problems start. In that Mencius believes human nature and heaven’s nature is the same principle, then I think Mencius’ belief is that we are naturally geared towards order. That we feel pleasure or joy when we are good and bad when we do evil. Using Locke, Hume, Bentham, or Jefferson’s belief, then in equating evil with pain and good with static happiness (not pleasure…except for Bentham and Epicurus) and in that all living things naturally have an aversion to pain, then I think Mencius was right—we are naturally drawn to goodness, like water flowing down-hill.
Shame…I’m reading xiu and e as together forming one feeling of disgust. Almost an aversion to evil. D.C. Lau translates both as “shame”, but that seems to leave out e. W.T.Chan uses shame and dislike, but dislike doesn’t really cover the e either. To me disgust would fit with 2A2 and 6A2, in that the alarm felt by the person watching the child would be partial to a feeling of disgust at the death of a child or injury. I know yan wu is the normal translation of disgust or repulsion, but I’m looking at an instinctual disgust, like retching at the smell of dead bodies or vomit or especially rotten foods, and yan wu doesn’t seem to fit. I’m not even sure if yan wu was a term used then. In that Mencius associates righteousness and goodness in the previous and next section with the taste of eating good meats, it would just seem to fit that evil would leave a bad taste in our mouths. Goes along with my previous statement about Mencius promoting that virtue and joy go together by the way…
What do you think?
Comment by David | October 26, 2009