3.0
Xunzi
ByPublisher Description
Xunzi asserted that the original nature of man is evil, differing on this point from Mencius, his famous predecessor in the Confucian school. In the most complete, well-ordered philosophical system of his day, Xunzi advocated the counteraction of man's evil through self-improvement, the pursuit of learning, the avoidance of obsession, and observance of ritual in life. Readers familiar with Xunzi's work will find that Burton Watson's lucid translation breathes new life into this classic. Those new to Xunzi will find his ideas on government, language, and order and safety in society surprisingly close to concerns of our own age.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesXunzi Reviews
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“If there’s a conversation about human nature, count me in!😂 In this work, Xunzi presents a sharp and structured vision of human nature, arguing that people are inherently self-centered and require external guidance like ritual and tradition to become virtuous. While his emphasis on discipline, education, and moral cultivation is compelling, his framework raises significant questions. If all humans are born with bad nature, how were the first rituals created in the absence of goodness? Wouldn't the sages themselves, being human, lack the virtue needed to craft such systems in the first place? Xunzi responds by claiming that rationality and conscious effort, not innate morality, enabled the creation of these practices. But this leads to another challenge: why rely on ritual when some individuals might develop virtue through honest self-reflection? And finally, without an original concept of goodness, how can we determine who is truly a sage and who is simply asserting authority?
Even with these tensions, Xunzi is a rewarding read. Whether you agree with him or not, he forces you to think hard about what shapes us: nature, habit, or something in between. Overall, the whole work is a dense but fascinating read that lays out a view of early Confucian thought. The writing is layered and philosophy is grounded in education, ritual, and self-discipline.”
About Burton Watson
Burton Watson is one of the world's best-known translators from the Chinese and Japanese. He received the PEN translation prize in 1981. His translations include The Lotus Sutra, The Vimalakirti Sutra, Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home, and The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century, all published by Columbia. This book presents Watson's renowned translation of a Chinese philosophy classic in pinyin romanization for the first time.
Other books by Burton Watson
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