聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

郭店楚簡·性自命出

5 min read

Text ID
KR2p0180
Date
-350–-300
Dynasty
周

Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn · Xìng Zì Mìng Chū 郭店楚簡·性自命出

Bamboo Slips from the Chu Tomb at Guodian — Nature Issues from Mandate

About the work

Xìng Zì Mìng Chū 性自命出 (“Nature Issues from Mandate”) is one of the major Confucian philosophical texts found among the Guōdiàn 郭店 bamboo slips, excavated in 1993 from tomb 1 at Guōdiàn, Jīngmén 荊門, Húběi, sealed around 300 BCE. The Guodian version preserves six sections covering the relationships among nature (xìng 性), mandate (mìng 命), emotions (qíng 情), and moral cultivation. A parallel and more complete version of this text is preserved among the Shanghai Museum bamboo slips (KR2p0183), where it is titled Xìngqíng Lùn 性情論. Xìng Zì Mìng Chū is one of the most significant pre-Qin documents for understanding early Confucian moral psychology, situating it in the period before the full systematizations of Mèngzǐ 孟子 and Xúnzǐ 荀子.

Abstract

The text is anonymous and has no received-tradition parallel. Its title (Xìng Zì Mìng Chū 性自命出) is taken from the opening of what is called the first full section: 性自命出，命自天降 (“Nature issues from mandate; mandate descends from Heaven”). This formula establishes a descent from Heaven through mandate (mìng 命) to human nature (xìng 性), and from nature to emotional response (qíng 情), situating the text within the early Confucian tradition of tracing moral psychology to cosmic or transcendent grounding.

The six sections of the Guodian version address:

  1. The derivation of nature from mandate, emotions from nature, and the role of external stimuli in activating the emotions. The opening triad — 喜怒哀悲之氣，性也 (“The breath of joy, anger, sorrow, and grief is nature”) — grounds the emotions in human nature rather than external circumstance.
  2. The primacy of nature and the comparison to resonance: just as metal and stone have sound but do not ring unless struck, nature does not manifest unless the heart engages it.
  3. The heart’s role in directing nature; the analogy of the mouth’s inability to speak alone; the differentiation of human moral learning from the instinctive development of animals (oxen grow large, geese extend their necks by nature; humans learn through instruction).
  4. The uniformity of nature across all within the four seas, and the differentiation of its application through instruction.
  5. The modes by which nature is moved (dòng 動), resisted (nì 逆), engaged (jiāo 交), tempered (lì 厲), extended (chū 出/絀 in variants), nurtured (yǎng 養), and developed (zhǎng 長).
  6. The agents of each mode: things (wù 物) move nature; pleasure (yuè 悅) resists it; occasions (gù 故) engage it; righteousness (yì 義) tempers it; circumstance (shì 勢) extends it; habituation (xí 習) nurtures it; the Dao develops it.

The Guodian text is considerably shorter than the Shanghai Museum version (KR2p0183). The Shanghai Museum version adds fifteen additional sections on music, comportment, and self-cultivation that are absent here. The relationship between the two versions (whether the Guodian text is an excerpt, an earlier draft, or a separate recension) remains debated. Most scholars treat them as two manuscript copies of a single composition, with the Guodian copy being incomplete or representing an earlier, shorter state.

The text belongs to the Guodian Confucian corpus alongside Wǔxíng 五行 (KR2p0021), Liùdé 六德, Zūndé Yì 尊德義, and related texts. Its philosophical orientation — rooting moral virtue in emotional nature rather than in external ritual constraint alone — has been compared to the Mencian and anti-Mencian debates preserved in early Confucian literature, though the text predates the full development of those debates.

The editio princeps is Jīngménshì Bówùguǎn 荊門市博物館, 《郭店楚墓竹書》 (Wénwù, 1998). For the parallel Shanghai Museum version, see KR2p0183.

No tiyao found in source.

Translations and research

  • Cook, Scott, tr. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation. 2 vols. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012. — full translation and commentary.
  • Holloway, Kenneth. Guodian: The Newly Discovered Seeds of Chinese Religious and Political Philosophy. OUP, 2009.
  • Goldin, Paul R. “Xunzi in the Light of the Guodian Manuscripts.” Early China 25 (2000): 113–146. — examines the Xìng Zì Mìng Chū in relation to Xunzian moral psychology.
  • Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Brill, 2004. — contextualizes the Guodian texts within early Chinese virtue ethics.
  • Kern, Martin, ed. Text and Ritual in Early China. University of Washington Press, 2005. — contains studies relevant to the Xìng Zì Mìng Chū’s treatment of music and ritual.
  • Liu Zhao 刘钊. Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn jiàoshì 郭店楚简校释. Fújiàn rénmín, 2003.
  • Li Ling 李零. Guōdiàn Chǔjiǎn jiàodú jì 郭店楚简校读记. Enl. ed. Rénmín dàxué, 2007.
  • Chan, Shirley, ed. Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts. Springer, 2019.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. “The Editing of Archaeologically Recovered Manuscripts and Its Implications for the Study of Received Texts.” In Rewriting Early Chinese Texts. SUNY Press, 2006, pp. 9–62.

Other points of interest

The passage 道始於情，情生於性 (“The Dao begins in emotion; emotion is born from nature”) is one of the earliest recorded formulations of the idea that the Dao is grounded in human emotional life rather than being an abstract or transcendent principle divorced from it. This formulation has implications for the history of the concept of qíng 情 in Chinese thought and for the relationship between Daoist and Confucian cosmologies in the Warring States period.

Graph View

Backlinks