Xunzi (Xun Kuang)
c. 310-235 BC · Classical Confucianism · Prominent
Xunzi was a Confucian philosopher who held, against Mencius, that human nature is bad, since people come into the world grasping and envious. Goodness is built by ritual, li, and deliberate effort, wei, kept up for years, the way a warped board is steamed straight. Heaven for him is nature running its course, indifferent to prayer, and he worked out how names should be set right.
Signature
The position Xunzi is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Ethics Basis
- Virtue
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (17 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (25 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (12 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Opposition
- mildly leans Sublation (33 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Mastery (13 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Xunzi refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism / Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Epistocracy / Communal Order
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Virtue / Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism / Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience / Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition / Rational Expertise / Custom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Common Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?