Comparing Mencius and Shunzi's Confucian Perspectives

Rival Confucianisms. Mencius or Shunzi? Some questions from last time. What's the difference between Confucianism and Rujia? Are they the same thing? Do you remember the meanings of the words Tian, Tao, Li, Ren, Wuwei? What was wrong in the spring and autumn period, and how did the Analects respond to this? Part 1. The Question of Hermeneutics Last time... We learned that Confucians refer to their own tradition as Rujia, the school of the refined, the school of the sages. As that title implies, it isn't just about Confucius, but rather about a whole collection or school of wise, authoritative people. Now, we're going to meet a few more of those sages. But first, a little problem. If there's one teacher, say Confucius, or one text, say the Analects, that everyone agrees is to be followed, well then why do we need more sages? Doesn't that imply that Confucius or the Analects didn't get it right the first time? The answer of Confucianism is no, not at all. We need more sages because people need to tell us how to interpret Confucius in the Analects. Confucius may tell us to follow Li in order to develop Ren, and the student of Confucius would agree. But who is to say exactly what Li is? Can Li change over time? Confucius tells us to honor Tian and the ancestors, but now Confucius himself is one of the ancestors. Does that make a difference? What does Ren look like, precisely? Is it learned, or is it innate in us? So the problem here isn't whether or not we should listen to Confucius and his Analects. It's how we should listen to them. Not are they right, but what do they mean? How are we to interpret them? This topic is called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics asks, how do we interpret something? Suppose you're an American. And like the vast majority of Americans, you support the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. And they were ratified in 1791. So, does that mean all Americans agree on what the Bill of Rights actually means? No, not at all. For the most famous example, which many of you probably already know about, here is the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Americans have been arguing over the meaning of this one sentence for some time, even though few Americans would say that they do not agree with it. Most Americans would say that they think it is literally correct, but that does not mean people aren't still fighting over it. First, we have linguistic questions. Are we supposed to interpret it using the English of 1791, when arms meant muskets and bayonets? Or do we use living English when arms includes semi-automatic weapons? When the text says infringed, does that mean repealed entirely? So the government can limit the rights to keep and bear arms, they just can't take those rights away. Or does infringed mean bother in any way? So the government cannot make any laws which forbid arms at all. Both meanings of infringed are possible. Second are questions of historical context. In 1791, there were no police forces, federal standing militaries, and the Americans had recently thrown off British rule. Well, none of those situations are true now. So, does that difference of historical context affect the meaning of this sentence? Or is context unimportant? Third, there's problems of emphasis. What's the most important part of this sentence? Is it the well-regulated militia part? Because that would suggest that the only reason people need arms is to be part of a government-regulated police force or army. So if you're not part of a well-regulated militia, you don't have the right to keep and bear arms. Or is the emphasis on the right of the people? Meaning the passage is laying out a principle for owning arms. So the fact that well-regulated militias aren't a thing anymore is irrelevant. People can keep and bear arms because that is the principle at work here. And then there's the problem of intention. What did the author of this line, James Madison, mean by it? Well, James Madison is rather dead, so we can't ask him. We can't even ask someone who asked him. So, if the intention of the author is the correct meaning of the sentence, we can't get it. Or, what if the intentions of the author are insignificant? After all, Madison could never have conceived of handguns or armor-piercing bullets, but the text, according to most Americans today, is saying something about them. So, if we throw the author's intention away, who gets to define the meaning of the sentence then? Anyone? No one? Some people, but not others? Well, these sorts of problems can keep going, and they're all a part of hermeneutics. How does one interpret? In the study of religion, hermeneutics applies to the study of important writings and teachers. Members of the same tradition may both agree that a certain book is important, but they will come to radically different interpretations of that book. Indeed, the issue of hermeneutics will be... as we'll see over the rest of the course, a major cause of debate and schism within religious communities. Confucianism is no different. Confucians all agree that Confucius is wise and the Analects are to be heeded. But how? Times change. Languages change. Context changes. What may have been considered common sense changes. Over the centuries, There have been noteworthy Confucians and schools of Confucianism that have tried to give the answers. Here are just two of them. Part 2. Mencius, the second sage. The first and probably most famous interpreter of Confucius and his teachings was Mencius, who died in 308 BCE. So he lived about five or six generations after Confucius did. And like the name Confucius, Mencius is a Latinization from Catholic Jesuit missionaries to China. His proper name was Mengzi, Master Meng. Mencius was from the state of Zhao, not too far from Confucius'home state of Lu. And there are stories from later histories that say Mencius studied with a student of Confucius'grandson, although we can't be sure if this is true. Like Confucius? Mencius traveled from state to state looking for employment as an advisor to a ruler, but he never found a noteworthy position anywhere. And like Confucius again, Mencius also eventually gave up and returned home to study, teach, and work on texts. Of note here is the book that bears his name, the Mungse, the Book of Mencius. Mencius reveres Confucius and defends his teachings throughout his book. For example, see here how Mencius thinks like a Confucian. He just makes assumptions that only a Confucian would make. On seeing Mencius, Zhang Bao said, when I met the king of Qi, he told me of his enjoyment of music. Mencius replied, if the king truly enjoyed music, the state of Qi would be doing quite well. What does enjoying music have to do with good governments? Remember Li? Part of good Li is self-cultivation through studying culture and art. To truly practice Li, one must enjoy music, for music is part of Li. And if one has the practices all right, then one will have Ren. And if the one who has Ren is a king, meaning he has the mandate of heaven, then the people will be well-ruled, and the state will thrive. So there it is. According to... this early Confucian line of thinking, there's a direct line between the blessings of Tian, rightful rule, and enjoying music. And Mencius agrees so thoroughly that he doesn't have to explain the point. Mencius doesn't merely reiterate what Confucius said two centuries earlier. He updates and advances the argument for his own day. The Book of Mencius is offering a hermeneutics to Confucius and the Analects, a claim of how to interpret them correctly. Confucius claims that people need to find the Tao again, and in order to do that, they must develop Ren by practicing Li. If you act the right way, you follow decorum, you study well, you follow the rituals, you will become humane and virtuous, thus guiding others to do the same. And then all of society will eventually be returned to the proper way. So, here is the question. How exactly does that work? Where does goodness come from in the first place, if the way is lost? In order to properly interpret Confucius, we need to know where to find this right conduct. And to this, Mencius gives his famous and simple reply. Human nature is good. Now, let's not think that Mencius is saying that all people are good, or humans are good. No one really thinks that, and Mencius is no different. Instead, Mencius is saying there is something inside of the human condition that is good, but that it needs to be refined. honed, developed. That is how we turn to Li and become humane and righteous. Mencius says that everyone has within them a semi-physical organ called a shin. When I say semi-physical, I mean that it's something that is in the human body and depends on its organs, but it's more than just that. Compare this to the English concept of a mind. When we say mind in English, we mean the powers of the body to think and react. And this is more or less based in one organ, the brain. But it also manifests in other organs, like the dexterity of a hand, or the focusing of an eye. Those are mind too, but in a more limited, particular sense. Shin is like that conception of mind, except that rather than being said to be based in the brain, it's based in one's chest, in the heart. So, shin is often translated into English as the heart-mind. The shin organ in you is what allows you to reason and come to conclusions. And, by the way, shin does not appear in the Analects of Confucius. This is a development. It is part of Mencius'hermeneutics of them. and it's part of the hermeneutics of other Confucians as well. You are born with Shin, the heart-mind. You didn't put it there. And it has within it certain powers and certain tendencies. These can be identified, Mencius tells us, when we act instinctively. In other words, we can know human nature, what the heart-mind actually does alone, when we act from nature alone. Mencius said, All human beings have a heart-mind, shin, that cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. Now, if anyone were suddenly to see a child about to fall into a well, his heart-mind would be filled with alarm, distress, pity, and compassion. At feeling these, he would react accordingly. Not because he would hope to use the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child's parents, nor would he seek commendation from his neighbors and friends, nor because he would hate the adverse reputation that would come from not acting accordingly. Because this heart-mind instinctively cares about others, Mencius can say that people are, in their very nature, good. The heart-mind is that something inside of you that reacts beyond just thinking. It's like your instinct. It's your primordial nature. It's that part of you that jumps when you see a stranger who's about to be hurt. But just having this alone does not mean all people are good. Not everyone would help a child. that was about to fall down a well, right? But why? Like any organ in the body, shins'powers don't develop on their own. They need care and refinement, like growing a plant. In that manner, Mencius says that the shin has within it four sprouts, tiny growths, that need to be cultivated and harnessed. The heart-mind's feeling of pity and compassion is the sprout of Ren. The heart-mind's feeling of shame and aversion is the sprout of rightness. The heart-mind's feeling of modesty and compliance is the sprout of Li. And the heart-mind's sense of right and wrong is the sprout of wisdom. We have to do some things, but... that something springs from our very nature. Like a sprout is part of earth's nature, but could use a farmer's hand to help it grow well, the sprouts of the heart-mind, pity, shame, modesty, and morality, can grow into the virtues able of knowing and serving heaven. Mencius said, By fully developing one's heart-mind, One knows one's nature. Knowing one's nature, one knows Tien. It is through preserving one's heart-mind and nourishing one's nature that one may serve Tien. And so the question of how does one turn to Li is both circumvented and expanded upon. It's circumvented because there is something naturally good in us. All we have to do is develop it. But it's also expanded upon because Mencius details the relationship between human nature and Confucian ideas like Li and Ren. These Mencian hermeneutics explain or explain away some insecurities in the older teachings of Confucius, but there are also side effects of this. To offer a reading is to offer new conclusions. So, for instance, Mencius'reading of Confucian thought leans slightly more towards egalitarianism. While both Confucius'Analects and the Book of Mencius are mostly interested with sages and rightful kings, for them the best of humans, Mencius gives Confucianism a slightly more universal flavor. If the proper li comes from human nature itself, the only difference between us and the greatest sages is practice. Sages are just human after all. and so that we are not of a different order. Things of the same kind are thus like one another. The sage and us are the same in kind. Thinking in these slightly more egalitarian terms is neither explicit in Confucius's own teachings, but neither is it foreign to them. It's just a new reading, a certain application of hermeneutics. What Mencius has done is apply a hermeneutical approach to Confucius'thought and then follow those new thoughts to new conclusions. Part 3. Shunzi, born around the time Mencius died, was the next great interpreter of Confucianism. Shunzi, Master Shun, who died somewhere around the year 210 BCE. Shunzi would come to be the favored interpreter of Confucianism for many centuries. It wasn't until the 10th or 11th centuries that Mencius began to overtake him in popularity. Like both Confucius and Mencius before him, Shunzi traveled the Chinese states in search of employment as a court advisor and scholar. But he, as far as we could tell, had a bit more success than his predecessors Confucius and Mencius. He earned several high-ranking positions in the state of Chu and in his home state of Zhao. And like Mencius, he is supposed to be the author of a text that is named after him, the Book of Shunzi. And also like Mencius, Shunzi considered Confucius a great teacher, and so he tried to interpret the master in his own day. But Shunzi would produce a very different reading of Confucianism than Mencius did. Actually, Shunzi thinks that mentioning Confucianism isn't right at all. Most importantly, Shunzi can... completely rejected Mencius'claim that human nature was good. Indeed, Xunzi says human nature is self-centered, petty, and ugly. Mencius said that human nature is good. I say that this is not correct. From antiquity to the present day, what the world has called good is what is correct, ordered, peaceful, and well-governed. What it has called evil is what is bias. Disordered, perverse, and chaotic. This is the difference between good and evil. Shunzi is aware of Mencius'reading of Confucius, but he believes that he has radically misread him. When the master told his students to practice Li, he wasn't telling them to turn to some inner nature. Actually, quite the opposite. Our natures are broken, violent, and disordered. That's why they require Li in the first place. The rituals and conduct needed for human thriving is found in conquering one's nature, not giving over to it. Our natures are animalistic and irrational. All the evils of this world come from people who just follow their natures. When someone follows their nature, it means they're just being selfish. And it's this selfishness that makes people steal, cheat, and kill each other. Nature isn't the cure to people's problems. Nature is the problem. Like Mencius though, Shunzi thinks that Confucius'teachings are the key to escaping the evils of this world. Shunzi also turned to the hermeneutical tool of the Shin, the heart-mind, to explain how we should live out Confucius'teachings. The Shin gives us the potential to be more than animals. Our thinking minds are that part of us that can choose and therefore can get better. But Shunsa doesn't mean this the way Mencius did. For Mencius, the sprouts of the heart-mind were how the human could, through Li, live in accord with the will of heaven. It is our nature to be good because nature itself, heaven, was good. But Shunsa disagrees with this. He says that heaven is not a moral agent at all. Shunsa is completely opposed the idea of a naturally good heaven. For him, Tien is entirely without morality and is indifferent to human concerns. Nature is what lets children die of hunger and selfish rulers rise to power. It's the job of the heart-mind to rise above animalistic nature by thinking and thus developing ideas and laws which are better than natural chaos. Humans don't need nature. They need order, morality, law, and education, all of which are artificial. They're human inventions. He gives the example of a potter shaping clay. When a potter shapes the clay to create a pot, the pot is the creation of the artificial and acquired nature of the potter and is not the product of anything inherent in his nature. The sage king's accumulated thoughts and ideas. They practiced artificiality. That is how they developed ritual and rightness and raised the standard of government. Ritual and rightness were born from their artificiality, not from the sage king's human nature. The great sages and kings of the past, people like Confucius, understood that the world was violent and cruel, and so they developed laws, moralities, and rituals. that are to tame us. Indeed, the very notion of a sage like Confucius suggests that we need to be taught, to be controlled by something or someone wiser or smarter than we naturally are. So when Confucius tells us to turn to Li in order to come to Ren, he's saying we have to rise above nature, not turn to it. Shunzi says that Confucius is the way to do this, but not because Confucius is correct in some cosmic sense that he exposes divine morality. Instead, Confucius is right, because he teaches the practical ways to get past the evils of nature. Confucius'turn to Li works, not because it's magic, it's not some way to manipulate Tian. Strictly speaking, there's nothing we can do to change the will of heaven about anything. Instead, Shenzi says that all manners, art, education, rituals, and law, all those things which compose Li, are to be understood simply as decorations. They are there to help us cultivate ourselves, to be refined, as long as we understand that they're not magic tricks. Lee does not manipulate nature so that the world becomes well-ordered. Lee manipulates us so that we are well-ordered and therefore can create order in the natural world. You prayed for rain and it rained. What do you think about that? I say, so what? If you had not prayed for rain, it would have rained anyway. We do not do these things because we think they will produce the results we want, but because we want to decorate the occasions with ceremony. The rituals that Confucius is asking people to turn to are not substantive in themselves, in that they can actually manipulate nature like magic or supernatural powers. What they are is a refinement of a broken human nature. We are chaotic, violent, and disformed. The rituals help us become a right again. So that leads us to this question, who has the right hermeneutics? Is heaven good, and thus our natures are good, as Mencius said? Or is Tian amoral and indifferent, and thus our natures need ritual and customs in order to conquer them? As Shunzi said, who is interpreting Confucius'call to Li correctly. Who has the right hermeneutics? Here are some thoughts for class. What is hermeneutics? What are some hermeneutical problems? What is Xin? Why is it important? How do Mencius and Xunzi differ over human nature? How do they differ over the nature of Tien? This lecture was based on the following. A translation of the Book of Mencius by Irene Bloom, edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe, 2009. Also, John Knobloch's translation and study of the complete works of Shunzi, 1988.

Rival Confucianisms. Mencius or Shunzi? Some questions from last time.

What's the difference between Confucianism and Rujia? Are they the same thing? Do you remember the meanings of the words Tian, Tao, Li, Ren, Wuwei?

What was wrong in the spring and autumn period, and how did the Analects respond to this? Part 1. The Question of Hermeneutics Last time... We learned that Confucians refer to their own tradition as Rujia, the school of the refined, the school of the sages. As that title implies, it isn't just about Confucius, but rather about a whole collection or school of wise, authoritative people. Now, we're going to meet a few more of those sages.

But first, a little problem. If there's one teacher, say Confucius, or one text, say the Analects, that everyone agrees is to be followed, well then why do we need more sages? Doesn't that imply that Confucius or the Analects didn't get it right the first time? The answer of Confucianism is no, not at all.

We need more sages because people need to tell us how to interpret Confucius in the Analects. Confucius may tell us to follow Li in order to develop Ren, and the student of Confucius would agree. But who is to say exactly what Li is? Can Li change over time?

Confucius tells us to honor Tian and the ancestors, but now Confucius himself is one of the ancestors. Does that make a difference? What does Ren look like, precisely?

Is it learned, or is it innate in us? So the problem here isn't whether or not we should listen to Confucius and his Analects. It's how we should listen to them. Not are they right, but what do they mean?

How are we to interpret them? This topic is called hermeneutics. Hermeneutics asks, how do we interpret something? Suppose you're an American. And like the vast majority of Americans, you support the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S.

Constitution. And they were ratified in 1791. So, does that mean all Americans agree on what the Bill of Rights actually means? No, not at all.

For the most famous example, which many of you probably already know about, here is the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Americans have been arguing over the meaning of this one sentence for some time, even though few Americans would say that they do not agree with it.

Most Americans would say that they think it is literally correct, but that does not mean people aren't still fighting over it. First, we have linguistic questions. Are we supposed to interpret it using the English of 1791, when arms meant muskets and bayonets? Or do we use living English when arms includes semi-automatic weapons? When the text says infringed, does that mean repealed entirely?

So the government can limit the rights to keep and bear arms, they just can't take those rights away. Or does infringed mean bother in any way? So the government cannot make any laws which forbid arms at all.

Both meanings of infringed are possible. Second are questions of historical context. In 1791, there were no police forces, federal standing militaries, and the Americans had recently thrown off British rule. Well, none of those situations are true now.

So, does that difference of historical context affect the meaning of this sentence? Or is context unimportant? Third, there's problems of emphasis.

What's the most important part of this sentence? Is it the well-regulated militia part? Because that would suggest that the only reason people need arms is to be part of a government-regulated police force or army.

So if you're not part of a well-regulated militia, you don't have the right to keep and bear arms. Or is the emphasis on the right of the people? Meaning the passage is laying out a principle for owning arms. So the fact that well-regulated militias aren't a thing anymore is irrelevant.

People can keep and bear arms because that is the principle at work here. And then there's the problem of intention. What did the author of this line, James Madison, mean by it?

Well, James Madison is rather dead, so we can't ask him. We can't even ask someone who asked him. So, if the intention of the author is the correct meaning of the sentence, we can't get it.

Or, what if the intentions of the author are insignificant? After all, Madison could never have conceived of handguns or armor-piercing bullets, but the text, according to most Americans today, is saying something about them. So, if we throw the author's intention away, who gets to define the meaning of the sentence then? Anyone? No one?

Some people, but not others? Well, these sorts of problems can keep going, and they're all a part of hermeneutics. How does one interpret?

In the study of religion, hermeneutics applies to the study of important writings and teachers. Members of the same tradition may both agree that a certain book is important, but they will come to radically different interpretations of that book. Indeed, the issue of hermeneutics will be...

as we'll see over the rest of the course, a major cause of debate and schism within religious communities. Confucianism is no different. Confucians all agree that Confucius is wise and the Analects are to be heeded. But how? Times change.

Languages change. Context changes. What may have been considered common sense changes.

Over the centuries, There have been noteworthy Confucians and schools of Confucianism that have tried to give the answers. Here are just two of them. Part 2. Mencius, the second sage.

The first and probably most famous interpreter of Confucius and his teachings was Mencius, who died in 308 BCE. So he lived about five or six generations after Confucius did. And like the name Confucius, Mencius is a Latinization from Catholic Jesuit missionaries to China.

His proper name was Mengzi, Master Meng. Mencius was from the state of Zhao, not too far from Confucius'home state of Lu. And there are stories from later histories that say Mencius studied with a student of Confucius'grandson, although we can't be sure if this is true. Like Confucius? Mencius traveled from state to state looking for employment as an advisor to a ruler, but he never found a noteworthy position anywhere.

And like Confucius again, Mencius also eventually gave up and returned home to study, teach, and work on texts. Of note here is the book that bears his name, the Mungse, the Book of Mencius. Mencius reveres Confucius and defends his teachings throughout his book.

For example, see here how Mencius thinks like a Confucian. He just makes assumptions that only a Confucian would make. On seeing Mencius, Zhang Bao said, when I met the king of Qi, he told me of his enjoyment of music. Mencius replied, if the king truly enjoyed music, the state of Qi would be doing quite well. What does enjoying music have to do with good governments?

Remember Li? Part of good Li is self-cultivation through studying culture and art. To truly practice Li, one must enjoy music, for music is part of Li. And if one has the practices all right, then one will have Ren. And if the one who has Ren is a king, meaning he has the mandate of heaven, then the people will be well-ruled, and the state will thrive.

So there it is. According to... this early Confucian line of thinking, there's a direct line between the blessings of Tian, rightful rule, and enjoying music. And Mencius agrees so thoroughly that he doesn't have to explain the point.

Mencius doesn't merely reiterate what Confucius said two centuries earlier. He updates and advances the argument for his own day. The Book of Mencius is offering a hermeneutics to Confucius and the Analects, a claim of how to interpret them correctly. Confucius claims that people need to find the Tao again, and in order to do that, they must develop Ren by practicing Li. If you act the right way, you follow decorum, you study well, you follow the rituals, you will become humane and virtuous, thus guiding others to do the same.

And then all of society will eventually be returned to the proper way. So, here is the question. How exactly does that work? Where does goodness come from in the first place, if the way is lost?

In order to properly interpret Confucius, we need to know where to find this right conduct. And to this, Mencius gives his famous and simple reply. Human nature is good.

Now, let's not think that Mencius is saying that all people are good, or humans are good. No one really thinks that, and Mencius is no different. Instead, Mencius is saying there is something inside of the human condition that is good, but that it needs to be refined.

honed, developed. That is how we turn to Li and become humane and righteous. Mencius says that everyone has within them a semi-physical organ called a shin. When I say semi-physical, I mean that it's something that is in the human body and depends on its organs, but it's more than just that.

Compare this to the English concept of a mind. When we say mind in English, we mean the powers of the body to think and react. And this is more or less based in one organ, the brain.

But it also manifests in other organs, like the dexterity of a hand, or the focusing of an eye. Those are mind too, but in a more limited, particular sense. Shin is like that conception of mind, except that rather than being said to be based in the brain, it's based in one's chest, in the heart.

So, shin is often translated into English as the heart-mind. The shin organ in you is what allows you to reason and come to conclusions. And, by the way, shin does not appear in the Analects of Confucius. This is a development. It is part of Mencius'hermeneutics of them.

and it's part of the hermeneutics of other Confucians as well. You are born with Shin, the heart-mind. You didn't put it there.

And it has within it certain powers and certain tendencies. These can be identified, Mencius tells us, when we act instinctively. In other words, we can know human nature, what the heart-mind actually does alone, when we act from nature alone.

Mencius said, All human beings have a heart-mind, shin, that cannot bear to see the sufferings of others. Now, if anyone were suddenly to see a child about to fall into a well, his heart-mind would be filled with alarm, distress, pity, and compassion. At feeling these, he would react accordingly.

Not because he would hope to use the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child's parents, nor would he seek commendation from his neighbors and friends, nor because he would hate the adverse reputation that would come from not acting accordingly. Because this heart-mind instinctively cares about others, Mencius can say that people are, in their very nature, good. The heart-mind is that something inside of you that reacts beyond just thinking. It's like your instinct.

It's your primordial nature. It's that part of you that jumps when you see a stranger who's about to be hurt. But just having this alone does not mean all people are good. Not everyone would help a child. that was about to fall down a well, right?

But why? Like any organ in the body, shins'powers don't develop on their own. They need care and refinement, like growing a plant.

In that manner, Mencius says that the shin has within it four sprouts, tiny growths, that need to be cultivated and harnessed. The heart-mind's feeling of pity and compassion is the sprout of Ren. The heart-mind's feeling of shame and aversion is the sprout of rightness.

The heart-mind's feeling of modesty and compliance is the sprout of Li. And the heart-mind's sense of right and wrong is the sprout of wisdom. We have to do some things, but...

that something springs from our very nature. Like a sprout is part of earth's nature, but could use a farmer's hand to help it grow well, the sprouts of the heart-mind, pity, shame, modesty, and morality, can grow into the virtues able of knowing and serving heaven. Mencius said, By fully developing one's heart-mind, One knows one's nature. Knowing one's nature, one knows Tien.

It is through preserving one's heart-mind and nourishing one's nature that one may serve Tien. And so the question of how does one turn to Li is both circumvented and expanded upon. It's circumvented because there is something naturally good in us.

All we have to do is develop it. But it's also expanded upon because Mencius details the relationship between human nature and Confucian ideas like Li and Ren. These Mencian hermeneutics explain or explain away some insecurities in the older teachings of Confucius, but there are also side effects of this. To offer a reading is to offer new conclusions.

So, for instance, Mencius'reading of Confucian thought leans slightly more towards egalitarianism. While both Confucius'Analects and the Book of Mencius are mostly interested with sages and rightful kings, for them the best of humans, Mencius gives Confucianism a slightly more universal flavor. If the proper li comes from human nature itself, the only difference between us and the greatest sages is practice. Sages are just human after all. and so that we are not of a different order.

Things of the same kind are thus like one another. The sage and us are the same in kind. Thinking in these slightly more egalitarian terms is neither explicit in Confucius's own teachings, but neither is it foreign to them.

It's just a new reading, a certain application of hermeneutics. What Mencius has done is apply a hermeneutical approach to Confucius'thought and then follow those new thoughts to new conclusions. Part 3. Shunzi, born around the time Mencius died, was the next great interpreter of Confucianism. Shunzi, Master Shun, who died somewhere around the year 210 BCE.

Shunzi would come to be the favored interpreter of Confucianism for many centuries. It wasn't until the 10th or 11th centuries that Mencius began to overtake him in popularity. Like both Confucius and Mencius before him, Shunzi traveled the Chinese states in search of employment as a court advisor and scholar.

But he, as far as we could tell, had a bit more success than his predecessors Confucius and Mencius. He earned several high-ranking positions in the state of Chu and in his home state of Zhao. And like Mencius, he is supposed to be the author of a text that is named after him, the Book of Shunzi. And also like Mencius, Shunzi considered Confucius a great teacher, and so he tried to interpret the master in his own day.

But Shunzi would produce a very different reading of Confucianism than Mencius did. Actually, Shunzi thinks that mentioning Confucianism isn't right at all. Most importantly, Shunzi can... completely rejected Mencius'claim that human nature was good.

Indeed, Xunzi says human nature is self-centered, petty, and ugly. Mencius said that human nature is good. I say that this is not correct.

From antiquity to the present day, what the world has called good is what is correct, ordered, peaceful, and well-governed. What it has called evil is what is bias. Disordered, perverse, and chaotic.

This is the difference between good and evil. Shunzi is aware of Mencius'reading of Confucius, but he believes that he has radically misread him. When the master told his students to practice Li, he wasn't telling them to turn to some inner nature. Actually, quite the opposite.

Our natures are broken, violent, and disordered. That's why they require Li in the first place. The rituals and conduct needed for human thriving is found in conquering one's nature, not giving over to it.

Our natures are animalistic and irrational. All the evils of this world come from people who just follow their natures. When someone follows their nature, it means they're just being selfish. And it's this selfishness that makes people steal, cheat, and kill each other.

Nature isn't the cure to people's problems. Nature is the problem. Like Mencius though, Shunzi thinks that Confucius'teachings are the key to escaping the evils of this world.

Shunzi also turned to the hermeneutical tool of the Shin, the heart-mind, to explain how we should live out Confucius'teachings. The Shin gives us the potential to be more than animals. Our thinking minds are that part of us that can choose and therefore can get better. But Shunsa doesn't mean this the way Mencius did.

For Mencius, the sprouts of the heart-mind were how the human could, through Li, live in accord with the will of heaven. It is our nature to be good because nature itself, heaven, was good. But Shunsa disagrees with this. He says that heaven is not a moral agent at all. Shunsa is completely opposed the idea of a naturally good heaven.

For him, Tien is entirely without morality and is indifferent to human concerns. Nature is what lets children die of hunger and selfish rulers rise to power. It's the job of the heart-mind to rise above animalistic nature by thinking and thus developing ideas and laws which are better than natural chaos.

Humans don't need nature. They need order, morality, law, and education, all of which are artificial. They're human inventions.

He gives the example of a potter shaping clay. When a potter shapes the clay to create a pot, the pot is the creation of the artificial and acquired nature of the potter and is not the product of anything inherent in his nature. The sage king's accumulated thoughts and ideas.

They practiced artificiality. That is how they developed ritual and rightness and raised the standard of government. Ritual and rightness were born from their artificiality, not from the sage king's human nature. The great sages and kings of the past, people like Confucius, understood that the world was violent and cruel, and so they developed laws, moralities, and rituals. that are to tame us.

Indeed, the very notion of a sage like Confucius suggests that we need to be taught, to be controlled by something or someone wiser or smarter than we naturally are. So when Confucius tells us to turn to Li in order to come to Ren, he's saying we have to rise above nature, not turn to it. Shunzi says that Confucius is the way to do this, but not because Confucius is correct in some cosmic sense that he exposes divine morality. Instead, Confucius is right, because he teaches the practical ways to get past the evils of nature. Confucius'turn to Li works, not because it's magic, it's not some way to manipulate Tian.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing we can do to change the will of heaven about anything. Instead, Shenzi says that all manners, art, education, rituals, and law, all those things which compose Li, are to be understood simply as decorations. They are there to help us cultivate ourselves, to be refined, as long as we understand that they're not magic tricks.

Lee does not manipulate nature so that the world becomes well-ordered. Lee manipulates us so that we are well-ordered and therefore can create order in the natural world. You prayed for rain and it rained. What do you think about that?

I say, so what? If you had not prayed for rain, it would have rained anyway. We do not do these things because we think they will produce the results we want, but because we want to decorate the occasions with ceremony. The rituals that Confucius is asking people to turn to are not substantive in themselves, in that they can actually manipulate nature like magic or supernatural powers. What they are is a refinement of a broken human nature.

We are chaotic, violent, and disformed. The rituals help us become a right again. So that leads us to this question, who has the right hermeneutics?

Is heaven good, and thus our natures are good, as Mencius said? Or is Tian amoral and indifferent, and thus our natures need ritual and customs in order to conquer them? As Shunzi said, who is interpreting Confucius'call to Li correctly.

Who has the right hermeneutics? Here are some thoughts for class. What is hermeneutics? What are some hermeneutical problems?

What is Xin? Why is it important? How do Mencius and Xunzi differ over human nature?

How do they differ over the nature of Tien? This lecture was based on the following. A translation of the Book of Mencius by Irene Bloom, edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe, 2009. Also, John Knobloch's translation and study of the complete works of Shunzi, 1988.

Transcript for:Comparing Mencius and Shunzi's Confucian Perspectives

Transcript for:
Comparing Mencius and Shunzi's Confucian Perspectives