Hsün-Tzu

Xunzi

 or Hsün-tzu

(born c. 300, Zhao kingdom, China—died c. 230 BCE, Lanling, Chu kingdom) Chinese scholar and philosopher. He belonged to the academy of philosophy in the state of Qi before becoming magistrate of a district in Chu in 255. His major work, the Xunzi, taught that humanity is evil by nature and can become good only through rigorous training. This view provoked much controversy because it opposed the teachings of Mencius, who believed in innate human goodness. Xunzi's teachings were later eclipsed when the Mencius became a Confucian classic. Xunzi is regarded as one of the three great philosophers of the classical period of Confucianism in China.

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Hsün-Tzu 

Born circa 313 B.C.; died circa 238 B.C. Ancient Chinese thinker whose views were set forth in his treatise Hsün-tzu.

Hsün-tzu’s ideas about the nature of the world and the origin of things were marked by a naïve materialism and by atheism. His sociopolitical views, which combined the teachings of Confucius about an ideal ruler with the ideas of the Legists (fa-chia), were based on the presumed evil nature of man. Hsün-tzu emphasized the need for an enlightened ruler, for a strict hierarchical social gradation, and for the regulation of all public life on the basis of the Confucian principles of li (’ (proper rules of conduct) and i (sense of duty), supplemented by the Legists’ system of punishments and incentives. Hsiin-tzu’s sociopolitical teachings laid the theoretical foundations for the official ideology of imperial China.

REFERENCE

Feoktistov, V. F. Filosofskie i obshchestvenno-politicheskie vzgliady Siun’-tszy: Issledovanie i perevod. Moscow, 1976.