First, the necessity of learning. "Learning alone is not enough." "A gentleman is learned. If he cares about himself every day, he will know it but not make mistakes." "God is greater than enlightenment, and joy is greater than harmlessness." "I've been thinking about it all day. It's better to learn it later." "The lives of gentlemen are different, and good and evil are also things."
Second, the importance of learning environment. "So, a gentleman will choose his hometown when he is born, and he will be a scholar when he swims. Therefore, he is also close to justice against evil. " "From the beginning, there must be a beginning."
Third, we must pay attention to persistence in learning. "Perseverance, dead wood cannot be carved; Perseverance can open the stone. " "A gentleman marries a man." "How can you be ignorant if you don't accumulate evil for good?"
Fourth, learning content. "Counting begins with chanting and ends with reading; Its meaning begins with scholars and ends with saints. " "The respect of ceremony, the sum of music, the abundance of poetry and books, and the end of the Spring and Autumn Period."
Fifth, the difference between "the study of gentlemen" and "the study of villains". "The study of a gentleman is also for beauty; The study of villains also thought it was a bird calf. "
Sixth, teachers are teachers. "Learning is almost close to people." "Learning is faster than learning, and Longli is second." "So, a gentleman is not proud, not hiding, not jealous, let nature take its course."
Seventh, the ultimate goal of learning. "If you do it, you will be a scholar." "The sky sees its brightness, and the earth sees its light, and the gentleman is expensive." (The word "complete" in these two sentences means "pure")
Confucius said without doing, talked without arguing. Learn from time to time, don't you? When the words are finished, the rest is understood by the disciples themselves. Xunzi can't. If he just said "you can't learn", I'm afraid it would have been forgotten long ago. "Encouraging Learning" can well reflect Xunzi's good at drawing inferences from others. It is well organized and thoroughly analyzed. This is the consensus of ancient and modern times, so I won't go into details.
We try the method of intertextual reference to further analyze the theoretical roots behind Xunzi's persuasion. Which article should be used in intertextuality? Take another famous article by Xunzi, Evil Nature, for example.
The theory of human nature is the logical starting point of Xunzi's theory. The Theory of Evil Nature holds that "love is good", "illness is evil" and "good taste" are inherent in life. If you follow them, there will be competition and chaos. This is the logic of Xunzi's theory of evil nature. But "malignant" does not stop there. It also discusses that there are recognizable qualities and tools in human nature, and these qualities and tools are possessed by "painters". Therefore, Xunzi's view of human nature is a multi-level meaning structure, the first meaning is the instinct of human beings; The second meaning is binary, which consists of evil desire and knowledge without good and evil.
Based on this, Xunzi put forward the theory of transforming human nature into falsehood. Fake, artificial. To turn nature into falsehood is to turn nature into nature and nurture the future. Xunzi pointed out: "Therefore, the sage becomes a fake, the fake is born with courtesy, and the courtesy is born with law." For nature, whether it is obedience, obedience, transformation or falsehood, this is the dividing line between a gentleman becoming a gentleman and a villain becoming a villain.
How can we turn nature into falsehood? Seeing the connection between "evil nature" and "persuasion" and studying wholeheartedly and persistently are important ways to turn nature into falsehood. In other words, if we want to explore the problem of "why, what and how to learn" in the article "Encouraging Learning" from the theoretical root, we must find the answer from Xunzi's theory of "turning nature into falsehood". It is precisely because of the importance of learning to transform human nature that Xunzi said that "learning is impossible" and "learning is endless".
Learning is the foundation, the key, but not the whole. After all, education is not everything. Therefore, Xunzi advocated the combination of etiquette and law and walked on two legs. Different from Confucius and Mencius, Xunzi advocated that ceremony was artificial, not natural; Rites are learned, and in the process of learning, the rules are internalized, that is, rituals. Law, like ceremony, is also an external order. If you don't observe the ceremony, you will be punished. This is the law.
Xunzi's theory of human nature confirmed the educational view of "turning nature into falsehood", which gave birth to the idea of using both etiquette and law, and in essence pushed "etiquette" into "law". Interestingly, Xunzi taught a famous student, Li Si, and influenced an important figure, Han Fei, but these two men had nothing to do with Confucianism and were completely legalists.
Reading bibliography:
Liao Mingchun's Interpretation of Xunzi (National Library Press)
Liu Gang and Li Dongjun, Cultural Jiangshan 04: China Axis (CITIC Publishing House)
Yang Zhao's Xunzi: The True Molder of Mainstream Confucianism (Guangxi Normal University Press)