Anyone who has read Xunzi can see some of his sharpness and directness. According to Yan Xiaoer's understanding of him, the sharpness and directness in his thoughts and opinions have something to do with "Taoist thought".
Zazie Hoko
Taoism is an "essential" thing, because what it studies. In a highly concise way, Taoism studies the existence of Tao, which makes everything "basic". Because it is "fine", it is "real". Because of "truth", there is no "fig leaf" here.
Compared with the related viewpoints of Mencius and Confucius, many of Xunzi's ideological principles have sharply torn off people's "fig leaf", such as Xunzi's famous viewpoint of "evil nature". Next, Yan Xiaoer will talk to you about Xunzi's use of a famous policy of Xunzi, the theory of evil nature, to uncover the ruthlessness of human beings in the "fig leaf" of civilized society.
1, Confucius and Mencius seem to talk about human nature, but in fact they emphasize "educating" human nature, which has been a focus of discussion among Chinese and foreign thinkers for thousands of years. As far as Confucianism is concerned, Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi have different views on human nature.
Or let's put it this way, the three sages looked for different "references" because they talked about the good and evil of human nature. At first glance, the "conclusions" they got were really quite different, but after a thorough study, the theories of the three sages would probably fall into the maintenance of "ceremony", and the way of maintenance was "enlightenment". This may be one of the reasons why the three theories have their own characteristics, but they are all Confucian sages.
For human nature, Confucius did not give too direct evaluation, but only said "sexual similarity", and then emphasized the "education" that people received the day after tomorrow and the influence of the growing environment on people. It also emphasizes the "plasticity" of people in the day after tomorrow.
Zazie Hoko
Confucius's move was very clever. He cleverly avoided the "good and evil evaluation" of human innate nature, highlighted the acquired growth that Confucianism valued, and thus emphasized the importance of "education".
Mencius' view of human nature is very direct. He even suggested that the difference between human beings and animals lies in the innate goodness, that is, the four good ends of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy and wisdom.
In Mencius' view, although these "goodness" exist in our nature, because there are too many temptations in the world, we learn knowledge and cultivate our self-cultivation in the process of growing up, with the aim of "introspection" and "self-correction" at this moment and avoiding being blinded by the desires of future generations.
It is not difficult to see that Mencius still emphasized "education" even though he labeled human nature as "goodness".
Zazie Hoko
He is telling people that if they don't want to be "animals" or "beasts" trapped by "appetite" in nature, they must study hard and know how to "wash" themselves with knowledge and elegant sentiments, so that people can remain unique or "noble" different from other "birds and beasts" for a long time and be called "good".
2. Xunzi's sharpness: Compared with the "cleverness" that Confucius avoided talking about, Mencius' painstaking "detour" and Xunzi's theory of advising people to "study hard, cultivate self-cultivation" seem very direct and even a little inhuman.
Everyone has a subconscious mind to "protect themselves". Yan Xiaoer thinks this is understandable, and there is no need to force himself to completely kill this "nature". This is our "nature".
Although we live in an "artificial" society, although we also understand that "artificial is false", correspondingly, no matter how artificial human society is, it cannot be separated from the big framework of "nature", and human society is also produced and developed in this big environment of nature.
However, no matter how artificial, the obvious difference between society and the so-called "nature" in the objective sense may be more reflected in the contrast between "artificial components" and "natural components" in the two environments.
Xunzi is very objective. He doesn't "flatter" people, let alone "beautify" why people should "educate". His answer is that without education, people may become "evil" because of the "disorderly development" of nature.
Why did Xunzi have this view? As we know, Taoism observes the world by the way of nature. In the Taoist world view, "good and evil" is a concept that human beings "artificially" forcibly distinguish, and some people's "subjective" value judgments are among them. It's like, we raise poultry and eat them. From the perspective of poultry, it is a "bad thing" for human beings to raise them and then eat them, but it is a "good thing" for us to fill our stomachs and supplement our nutrition. The example is very rough, as long as you understand logic.
That is to say, in Taoist thought, the "good and evil" in our world is based on "benefiting people" and has a position. The reason why "nature" has no "status" is because "heaven and earth are ruthless", so there is no moral judgment of so-called good and evil.
Zazie Hoko
Xunzi understands the objectivity of Taoism about "good and evil", so he analyzes human nature from the perspective of human society.
In human society, obeying the law and maintaining social stability is "goodness". On the contrary, it is "evil" to have a negative impact on social etiquette and social order.
Here, Xunzi regards man's acquired growth and practice as an "excellent" polite "social man" and regards it as "goodness". Without acquired education and good guidance, people's "natural self-interest" nature can easily be transformed into "greed" that harms others, harms themselves and even harms others.
Zazie Hoko
In the final analysis, uneducated human nature tends to make people "evil" in human society.
According to Xunzi's logic, if people don't accept enlightenment, then in human society, it is not only difficult for people to act in harmony and disrupt social order, but also difficult to cultivate noble sentiments such as "dedication" and "fearlessness".
In an environment where everyone is selfish and takes pleasure in robbing others, the disintegration of society is not far away.
In this regard, tracing back to the source, Xunzi is probably warning the world that if people do not accept "enlightenment" and let their innate "sex" develop, there will be great trouble, such as spreading all kinds of "evil".
And Xunzi's point of view, for the "literati who cherish feathers", is not it also a degree of self-denial?
It is said that Mencius' "well-intentioned" is a "fig leaf", and Xunzi is naked to open this "fig leaf". Although she didn't deny "nature", he pointed out the trend of "evil" in nature, which is only a small step away from direct "denial" and really sharp.
3. Seeing the darkness clearly is a skill. Because of "lack", people always instinctively seek high and far.
In other words, everything is relatively "scarce" by nature, because under survival, "desire" drives everything to act and run.
However, human beings have thought and created human civilization, and a few people have begun to look at life, even skipping human society and seeing more "far" places.
Because of the lack of "light", a small number of "smart people" here always look to places with light.
A truly well-developed wise man has a calm heart and more objective and rational eyes.
Therefore, a rational and calm wise man sees not only the "light" that everyone longs for, but also the "darkness".
Zazie Hoko
Many times, it's not that people can't see "darkness", but the lack of "light", which makes them turn a blind eye to "darkness" and finally deceive themselves all their lives. This is the perfection in the utilitarian sense, but it is the regret of life.
For Yan Xiaoer, Xunzi's frankness stems from his seeing the "darkness", and he hopes that people can also face the "darkness" that is contrary to their own position in his sharp disclosure. There is a kind of stubbornness and frankness, and it is also full of the most sincere "expectation" for people. If he really thinks his appeal is useless, why should he "take the world by storm" and expect to wake up the people who pretend to sleep?
At the same time, I also have a bold guess that Mencius' detour of "good nature" and Confucius' detour of "similar nature" is brilliant, not because they didn't find the "light" that Xunzi saw, but because they know too much about "human nature" and they do whatever they want, guiding people to self-discipline and self-cultivation through "enlightenment" and finally achieving self-improvement.
In a word, Yan Xiaoer finally felt that China's traditional culture was profound and worth learning.
Zazie Hoko
Note: This article is the original and exclusive release of Yan Xiaoer's philosophical works. If there is any infringement such as handling or plagiarism, the responsibility will be investigated once found. The pictures in this paper come from the Internet, and some materials come from the Internet. They have been hacked and deleted (within two weeks). Please enjoy this series.