[HN Gopher] Commentary on Xunzi's "Discourse on Heaven"
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Commentary on Xunzi's "Discourse on Heaven"
Author : exolymph
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-12-21 19:02 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (alicemaz.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alicemaz.substack.com)
| userbinator wrote:
| Discourse on Heaven, the successor to Discuz on Earth?
|
| (Sorry, could not resist...)
|
| More seriously, it's interesting to see the distinctively
| authoritarian line of thought even in ancient China; certainly
| explains a few things about their culture and society today.
| seewhydee wrote:
| I mean, Plato argued for governance by philosopher-kings, not
| too different from the Confucian conception of governance.
|
| What's more interesting to me is the skeptical attitude toward
| omens and the notion of heavenly will. That sounds really
| remarkably modern, and not at all what I'd expect from someone
| writing during the third century BCE.
| mbivert wrote:
| I don't think it's peculiar to China: parents towards young
| children naturally act authoritatively, in part because of the
| nature of young children. This nature somehow perseveres in
| adulthood, albeit altered: consider for example Asch's
| experiments[0], or this antique idea of assimilating rulers to
| shepherds.
|
| (I'm using "authoritative" in a neutral sense here, free from
| its usual negative undertone)
|
| Edit: Hm, I was incidentally opening the San Zi Jing[1] a few
| moments ago. It's a historically important educational Chinese
| book, and it opens with: "Men at their birth are naturally
| good."
|
| The character used for "good" is "Shan " (shan), which contains
| in part "Yang " (yang), meaning "goat/sheep".
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Character_Classic
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Oh, wait until you read about the so-called Legalists.
| canjobear wrote:
| I wouldn't say Xunzi is authoritarian. His school, the
| Confucians, were explicitly opposed to ruling by force and raw
| power, and instead thought that a state should rule by creating
| and following proper rituals for everyone to follow. The
| rituals would act psychologically to instill a sense of virtue
| in everyone, and then you would have a harmonious state where
| the ruler doesn't need to do anything except wear the ritual
| robes and face south. They thought a state based on naked force
| (or one based on explicit laws) would be too unstable.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| This guy Xunzi is mildly modern, even heretic, with respect to
| the prevailing confucians and taoists, no surprise that he is not
| better known.
|
| See the chapter: "Proper Use of Terms" (Zheng Ming zhengming): A
| name becomes proper for a situation through conventional usage,
| but once this is fixed it is improper to deviate from this norm.
| "
|
| Totally an ancient tech blogger
| asimpletune wrote:
| Yeah one of the things I love about him is that he takes an
| idea so far that you can't tell if it's actually meant as
| satire. Humor alone is enough to make him revolutionary.
| HuShifang wrote:
| For context, he is _reasonably_ well known -- probably the
| third most-prominent of the early Confucians (albeit a distant
| third, after Confucius and Mencius), with partial and complete
| English translations. But, he was often regarded by Confucians
| throughout Chinese history warily, because of certain
| "Legalist" tendencies (which, to put it crudely, were more
| authoritarian and Machiavellian as well as more legalistic),
| which were frequently disparaged (but quietly drawn on by
| pragmatic "statecraft" thinkers). Especially because two of his
| students, Han Fei and Li Si, were arguably the most (in)famous
| legalists.
|
| That said, I had a teacher years ago from Taiwan who argued
| that 1) Xunzi was the first full-blown "philosopher" (in the
| Western sense of offering an epistemology etc and arguing in a
| logically reasoned way) in Chinese history, and that 2) Xunzi
| and Zhuangzi were the smartest Chinese thinkers of all time.
| Years later, I'm not sure she was wrong.
| hmm37 wrote:
| I would actually say that for Confucians, it's Confucius,
| Mencius then Zhu Xi. Xunzi comes 4th, and was regarded a bit
| heterodox.
| HuShifang wrote:
| Yes, but as I said, I was talking about _early_ Confucians.
| hmm37 wrote:
| Oh. I missed that. In that case wouldn't Confucius
| grandson (Zi Si ) be higher up? After all he supposedly
| taught Mencius and wrote the Doctrine of the Mean Zhong
| Yong , and that work is considered standard reading,
| while reading Xunzi would have been probably only read
| when you're already a scholar and mastered pretty much
| everything else.
|
| That said, perhaps the Doctrine of the Mean wasn't
| considered all that important despite being part of the
| Book of Rites (Li Ji ), or rather it wasn't considered
| prominent until around the Song dynasty.
| hmm37 wrote:
| We can e.g. compare this to something Zhuangzi (a Daoist)
| stated.
|
| Quan Zhe Suo Yi Zai Yu ,De Yu Er Wang Quan Ti Zhe Suo Yi Zai
| Tu ,De Tu Er Wang Ti Yan Zhe Suo Yi Zai Yi ,De Yi Er Wang Yan
| Wu An De Wang Yan Zhi Ren Er Yu Zhi Yan Zai ?
|
| The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten
| the fish, you can forget the trap.
|
| The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've
| gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare.
|
| Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning,
| you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has
| forgotten words so I can have a word with him?
|
| Although perhaps they are talking about two different things.
| Moreover, during Spring and Autumn into the Warring states
| period Confucius was e.g. changing the conventional usage of
| terms, e.g. what it meant or standards to be a Jun Zi
| (noble/gentleman).
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