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荀子

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Text ID
KR3a0002
Date
-280–-238
Dynasty
周

Xúnzǐ 荀子

The Master Xún by 荀況 (Xún Kuàng, ca. 313–238 BCE, 周, 撰); 楊倞 (Yáng Liàng, fl. 818, 唐, 注)

About the work

The principal Warring States Confucian zǐ-text after the Mèngzǐ, transmitted in twenty juan / thirty-two 篇 with the early-Táng commentary of Yáng Liàng, completed in 818. The Hàn-era arrangement was twelve juan / thirty-three 篇, edited by Liú Xiàng 劉向 from a corpus that originally totalled — by Liú’s own account — three hundred and twenty-three 篇 deduplicated to two hundred and ninety, and titled Sūn Qīng xīnshū 孫卿新書. Yáng Liàng rearranged the Sūn Qīng xīnshū into twenty juan, regrouped the chapters by theme, restored the title to Xúnzǐ, and supplied the only major premodern commentary. Within the SKQS Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi this is the heart of the pre-Qín portion of the section. The work is the major non-Mencian witness to Warring States Confucian thought, with its own technical vocabulary on ritual (lǐ 禮) as humanly fashioned (wěi 偽), on learning (quànxué 勸學), and on human nature as morally raw rather than morally good.

Tiyao

The Xúnzǐ in twenty juan — copy from the Inner Storehouse (內府藏本).

Composed by Xún Kuàng of the Zhōu, a man of Zhào 趙. He once held office in Chǔ 楚 as magistrate of Lánlíng 蘭陵. He is also called Xún Qīng 荀卿. Hàn-period writers sometimes call him Sūn Qīng 孫卿, avoiding by tabooed-name analogy the personal name of Emperor Xuān 宣帝 (Liú Xún 劉詢). The Hàn shū yìwén zhì under the Rújiā heading gives “Xún Qīng, thirty-three 篇”; Wáng Yīnglín 王應麟’s textual examination held that the right reading was thirty-two 篇. Liú Xiàng 劉向’s Xiàoshū xùlù 校書序錄 records the Sūn Qīng book at three hundred and twenty-three 篇 collected, two hundred and ninety duplicates eliminated, leaving thirty-three 篇 fixed in twelve juan, titled Xīnshū. Yáng Liàng of the Táng broke up and rearranged the old chapter sequence, re-edited the work into twenty juan, supplied a commentary, and changed the title back to Xúnzǐ — that is the present text.

On Liú Xiàng’s preface: Xún Qīng came to study at Jìxià 稷下 in the time of King Xuān of Qí 齊宣王, later took office in Chǔ, and was discharged when Lord Chūnshēn 春申君 was killed. But the Shǐjì liùguó niánbiǎo 史記六國年表 places Lord Chūnshēn’s death eighty-seven years after the end of King Xuān’s reign, and the Shǐjì says Xún Qīng came to Qí at age fifty — which would make him one hundred and thirty-seven at Lord Chūnshēn’s death. Manifestly impossible. Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 in the Dúshū zhì 讀書志 takes the Shǐjì’s “fifty” to be a copyist’s slip for “fifteen”, which is plausible. Sòng Lián 宋濂 in his colophon to the Xúnzǐ further holds that he came to Jìxià in King Xiāng’s 襄王 reign, but does not say on what evidence. In sum he was a Warring States man; his exact birth and death dates can no longer be ascertained.

In his writings Xún made his subject the elucidation of the teachings of the Duke of Zhōu 周公 and Confucius, exalting ritual and exhorting learning. The two chapters most often used as ammunition against him are “Fēi shíèrzǐ” 非十二子 (“Refutation of the Twelve Masters”) and “Xìng è” 性惡 (“Human Nature is Evil”). Wáng Yīnglín in his Kùnxué jìwén 困學紀聞 cites the Hán shī wàizhuàn 韓詩外傳 to argue that the original chapter refuted only ten masters and did not name Zǐsī 子思 and Mencius, those two having been added by Xún’s pupil Lǐ Sī 李斯 and others; this is to forget that Zǐsī and Mencius came to be ranked as sages only later, and were in his own time merely his contemporaries — quite as Zhū Xī 朱熹 and Lù Jiǔyuān 陸九淵 attacked one another, and not to be wondered at.

As for “Xìng è”, taking nature as evil and goodness as wěi 偽 (“made”), the doctrine is admittedly under-developed at the level of principle. But Xún feared that men might rest on the doctrine of original goodness, give themselves over to spontaneity, and abandon study; he therefore said that nature is not to be relied upon, and that men should exert themselves in the teachings of the former kings. Hence his words: “Nature is what is brought to completion by Heaven; it cannot be learned, it cannot be acted upon. Ritual and rightness are what the sages have produced; they are what men learn and so come to be capable of, and what men act upon and so bring to completion. What cannot be learned and cannot be acted upon, and yet is in men, is called nature; what can be learned and so brought to capability, and acted upon and so brought to completion, and which is in men, is called wěi. This is the distinction between nature and wěi.” His use of wěi is set out clearly enough. Yáng Liàng’s note is to the same effect: “Wěi means ‘to act’ (爲); whatever is not Heaven’s nature but is humanly made is called wěi. Hence the character wěi is a person-radical added to wéi, and is a phono-semantic compound.” The reading agrees with Xún’s own intent. Later readers, ignorant of glossography, took wěi to mean “true vs. false” wěi (i.e. counterfeit), and roared in indignation that Xún was holding ritual in contempt as the LǎoZhuāng do. They had not seen the whole book, and indeed in the “Xìng è” chapter itself had not read past the opening two sentences.

To pronounce calmly: Xún’s learning derives from the school of Confucius, and among the Hundred Masters is the closest to orthodoxy — that is his strength. His urgency in advocacy occasionally pushes phrasing past what is just — that is his weakness. Hán Yù’s 韓愈 verdict — “great in the main with small flaws” (大醇小疵) — must stand; the rest is partisan opinion. Yáng Liàng’s notes are quite full and well-grounded. The Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì makes Liàng the son of Yáng Rǔshì 楊汝士, but the Zǎixiàng shìxì biǎo lists Rǔshì’s three sons as Zhīwēn 知溫, Zhīyuǎn 知遠 and Zhīzhì 知至, with no Liàng. The two registers are both by Ōuyáng Xiū 歐陽修’s hand, and how they came to disagree is unclear. Possibly Liàng changed his name, as Wēn Tíngyún 溫庭筠 was also called Wēn Qí 溫岐.

Abstract

The Xúnzǐ is the third pillar of the early Confucian zǐ-corpus. Its textual history runs through three layers: (1) Warring States compositions by Xún Kuàng and his immediate disciples, completed in the working lifetime of the master, conventionally bracketed within ca. 280–238 BCE (the upper bound being his arrival at Lánlíng, the lower his loss of office at Lord Chūnshēn’s death); (2) a Western Hàn editorial recension by Liú Xiàng (preface in Xiàoshū xùlù, surviving as a fragment), titled Sūn Qīng xīnshū 孫卿新書, in twelve juan / thirty-two (or thirty-three) 篇; (3) the early-Táng re-edition by Yáng Liàng of 818, in twenty juan, with the present title and the standard premodern commentary, included in the SBCK and reproduced in the SKQS. Yáng Liàng’s preface, dated Yuánhé 13 / 12 (818), and his account of his editorial method are preserved in KR3a0002_000.txt of the SBCK base.

The dating problem in the Shǐjì is famous: Sīmǎ Qiān reports that Xún Qīng went to Qí at age fifty, but pairing this with the death of Lord Chūnshēn in 238 BCE forces an impossible lifespan. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s emendation 五十 → 十五 has remained the working solution. The catalog meta gives -313 to -238; the more cautious bracket for the period of composition is roughly his mature working life ca. 280–238 BCE, used here in the frontmatter.

The “Fēi shíèrzǐ” 非十二子 chapter — Xún’s polemic against twelve named figures (including Zǐsī and Mencius) — and the “Xìng è” 性惡 chapter (on wěi 偽 / human “making”) are the polemically pivotal chapters that drove the work’s marginalisation in post-Sòng orthodox tradition; both are foregrounded in the SKQS tíyào. The textual transmission since Yáng Liàng has been comparatively stable, with the major modern critical editions (Wáng Xiānqiān, Liáng Qǐxióng, Lǐ Díshēng, Wáng Tiānhǎi) all working from the Yáng Liàng base.

The bibliographic record outside the SKQS is at Hàn shū yìwén zhì (孫卿子 三十三篇), Suí shū jīngjí zhì (孫卿子 十二卷), Jiù Táng shū jīngjí zhì, Xīn Táng shū yìwén zhì, Chóngwén zǒngmù and Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì. The Jīngyì kǎo 經義考 does not catalogue Xúnzǐ as a classic but the work is comprehensively treated in Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù under Zǐbù — Rújiā lèi yī.

Translations and research

  • John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols., Stanford University Press, 1988–1994. The complete English translation of record; vol. 1’s introduction is the standard Western critical biography.
  • Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text, Princeton University Press, 2014. The current standard one-volume English translation.
  • Burton Watson, Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1963. A widely cited selection.
  • Wáng Xiānqiān 王先謙 (1842–1917), Xúnzǐ jíjiě 荀子集解, 1891 — the canonical Qīng commentary, base for nearly all modern editions.
  • Liáng Qǐxióng 梁啓雄, Xúnzǐ jiǎnshì 荀子簡釋, Běijīng: Gǔjí Chūbǎnshè, 1956; Zhōnghuá Shūjú reprint.
  • Lǐ Díshēng 李滌生, Xúnzǐ jíshì 荀子集釋, Tabei: Xuésheng Shūjú, 1979.
  • Paul R. Goldin, Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi, Open Court, 1999.
  • T. C. Kline III and Justin Tiwald (eds.), Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi, SUNY Press, 2014.
  • Edward J. Machle, Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the Tian Lun, SUNY Press, 1993.
  • A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, Open Court, 1989, ch. III.4 — the standard analytical treatment within Western pre-Qín philosophy.
  • Hé Zhìhuá 何志華 et al., Xúnzǐ zhúzì suǒyǐn 荀子逐字索引 (D. C. Lau Concordance Series), Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1996.

Other points of interest

The doctrinal opposition between Xúnzǐ and Mencius on human nature is the single most cited contrast in pre-Qín Confucian thought, and the strict philological reading of wěi 偽 — emphasised by both the SKQS tíyào and Yáng Liàng’s note — as “humanly made” rather than “false / counterfeit” remains essential to any defensible interpretation of the “Xìng è” chapter. The chapters “Quànxué” 勸學 (chapter 1) and “Lǐlùn” 禮論 (chapter 19) are arguably the most influential of the work in later tradition, with “Quànxué” especially providing the textbook locus for the post-Hàn elevation of xué 學.

Recent excavated-text scholarship has revisited the Xúnzǐ’s “Yuèlùn” 樂論 against the Guōdiàn 郭店 Xìng zì mìng chū 性自命出 and Shànghǎi Bówùguǎn 上海博物館 Mín zhī fùmǔ 民之父母 strips, with consequences for the chronology of Warring States qíng / xìng discourse.

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