In the past thirty years, I think the academic community has neglected and snubbed the study of Xunzi.
I believe that the study of Xunzi can be carried out in two directions: one is the direction of the history of scripture, and the other is the direction of the history of philosophy. In the past, there was no history of philosophy in China, and Xunzi was viewed from a scriptural and cultural point of view. Just now Professor Chen Lai talked about the dynamics of Xunzi's academic research at home and abroad in recent years, and he raised a very important question: Xunzi's attitude toward cultural inheritance and his position on political Confucianism. This is a topic worth studying.
Xunzi
As everyone knows, Xunzi raised the issue of "Fa Xian Wang" and "Fa Hou Wang". During the Cultural Revolution, everyone opposed "Fa Xian Wang" and "Fa Hou Wang", believing that Xun Zi was the "Fa Hou Wang" and others were "Fa Xian Wang". The "Pharaohs" are retro, retro, and reactionary. In fact, Xunzi is both the "King of the Fa Xian" and the "King of the Fa Hou". "King Fa xian" is talking about "cultural inheritance", that is, inheriting the cultural tradition since Yao Shun, he said: "I don't hear the last words of the previous king, and I don't know the greatness of learning." He also criticized Huishi and others for "not being a lawless king, not a courtesy." The "Queen of the Law" was based on the politics of the time and spoke of "political Confucianism." We consider from the perspective of modern Chinese society, which is also understandable: we now attach importance to inheriting and carrying forward China's excellent traditional culture, which is equivalent to "The First King". But this does not mean that modern society is regressed to antiquity, it is just a cultural inheritance. If we speak from a political point of view, it must also be based on the modern social and political system, which is in this sense the "queen of the law". What was the political and cultural background of Xunzi's time? It was Mencius's faction that overemphasized "the king of the Fa Xian" and "said that he would be called Yao Shun", and everything was done according to Yao Shun's method. Xunzi revised the Mengzi school, "Long Li yi and kill the poetry book", "kill" means to reduce, demote, etc., that is, to reduce the status of the "poem" and "book", to raise the status of "li yi" upwards, to put the current world affairs in the first place, I think this is an adjustment of the Confucian strategy at that time.
Another important evidence of Xunzi's emphasis on cultural inheritance is the "transmission of scriptures". Xunzi was a Confucian who "passed on the scriptures", and we have not heard of Mencius passing on the scriptures, and Mencius did many things in the "propagation of the Tao". In terms of "passing on the scriptures", it was mainly done by Xunzi. After Confucius, there are two important representatives of the transmission of the scriptures, one is Confucius's disciple Zixia, and then xunzi, and the classic inheritance of the Han Dynasty is from xunzi, which also proves that xunzi attaches great importance to cultural inheritance. For example, the study of "poetry" and "poetry" were divided into four major schools in the Han Dynasty, in addition to the Qi "poems", Mao's "poems", Lu 'poems", and Han 'poems' should all be handed down by Xunzi. There are also "Spring and Autumn" studies, "Spring and Autumn" three transmissions, in addition to "Ram Biography", "Gu Liang Biography" and "Zuo Zhuan" two schools are also handed down from Xunzi.
Moreover, in the pre-Qin Dynasty, Xunzi was the first to propose the concept of "reading the scriptures", when he did not mention the Zhou Yi, the other five classics were mentioned, and the "Five Classics" at that time were almost a small encyclopedia. The Book of Poetry is literature, the Book of Shang and the Spring and Autumn are history, the Book of Rites is sociology, and the Book of Music is musicology. Therefore, Xunzi said, after reading the Five Classics, "the way of the world is complete." In short, we can study Xunzi well from the direction of the study of scripture.
In addition, we can also study Xunzi from the direction of philosophical research. Before the 1980s, those of us who worked on the history of philosophy spoke only of two pairs: materialism and idealism, dialectics, and metaphysics. According to such a rigid and dogmatic model, the history of Chinese philosophy has become a simple "label". Since the 1980s, everyone has opposed this model and studied it according to the original appearance of China's intellectual history.
But looking back, is there a tradition of materialism and idealism in the history of Chinese thought? I think there are still some, just don't absolutize and dogmatize it. From a materialist point of view, Xunzi was the first to systematically expound materialism. The people in the back, whether it is Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi, Zhang Zai, Wang Tingxiang, and Wang Fuzhi, all came down from his path, and it should be said that there is also a materialist tradition. I think this materialist tradition went all the way to Zhang Dainian, who loved the materialist tradition in history, and his favorite was Zhang Zai. In the mid-1980s, Bao Zunxin of our Intellectual History Research Office published an article entitled "Reappraisal of Idealism", which had a high evaluation of idealism but relatively disparaged materialism. At an academic conference, Bao Zunxin talked about his views, and Mr. Zhang Dainian was very angry after listening to it and resolutely refuted it. He believed that the historical contribution of materialist philosophers must not be erased.
How to evaluate the ideas of Xunzi materialism? I personally believe that in the understanding of the natural world by both materialism and idealism, the philosophers of the Xunzi materialist school may be closer to the truth. I myself don't believe there are any gods or gods in the world. I once asked a Christian friend, "Does God exist?" He said, "How can God not exist?" Those of us who study the history of Chinese philosophy often encounter the concept of "heaven", whether it is the heaven of nature, the heaven of theology, or the heaven of righteousness. I think it might be a natural day. The heavens of theology, the days of righteousness, are added by people. Therefore, from a "truth-seeking" point of view, the philosophers of the Xunzi materialist school may be closer to the truth.
However, we humans still have a "good" appeal. In addition to "seeking truth", it is also necessary to "seek goodness". "True" and "good" sometimes contradict each other. Therefore, I think that the philosophers of the Xunzi materialist school may also have a shortcoming, that is, he deconstructed all possible sacred values, and thus lost the "reverence" for heaven, and lacked enough "reverence" for many things that should be "revered". And our current Chinese just lack such a "reverence" heart.
Xunzi sacrifice wine map
Recently, I think we still have to add a little "reverence" to "heaven". The ancients were very clever, "Shinto set up religion", "Shinto" was set up for "enlightenment", I think this is a wisdom. Since the Western Zhou Dynasty, heaven and the Mandate of Heaven have always had theological significance, and by the time of Confucius, "Heaven" and "Mandate of Heaven" have always had theological significance. At the time of Xunzi, the theological meaning of "heaven" and "mandate of heaven" was excluded. Our history of Chinese philosophy cannot be without this thing, without questioning the negative aspects of the theological meaning of "heaven"; without it, there would be no truth. But how to deal with the relationship between "truth" and "goodness," between truth and value? This is something that philosophers should think about carefully, and I think it means a lot.
As we mentioned earlier, Xunzi's academic thinking has been snubbed in the last thirty years. In fact, this is not just the last thirty years, for two thousand years Xunzi's academic thought has almost been snubbed. In the Han Dynasty, the study of the scriptures was heavy and the light son was studied. Han Yu of the Tang Dynasty said that Xunzi was "big and small". In the Song Dynasty, Mencius was upgraded to a classic, and the book Xunzi was snubbed. Therefore, in the past two thousand years of academic intellectual history, the status of Xunzi has not been very high. I think we need to give him a new historical evaluation and positioning.
In recent years, Professor Liang Tao has proposed the "New Four Books", which include the Analects and Mencius, which were originally from the old "Four Books". His opinion was to return the "University" and "Zhongyong" to the "Book of Rites" and treat the "Book of Rites" as a book, which Chen Qing once mentioned in the early Qing Dynasty. The Book of Rites was not originally a book, but a collection of many Confucian documents compiled by Confucians in the Han Dynasty, and the content was very mixed. There are also some valuable documents, and Confucius's "Datong" thought is found in the Book of Rites. The fourth book is "Xunzi", which raises "Xunzi" to the status of "Jing", and I think this proposal is necessary, "things are man-made". The study of Taoism in our mainland has always been very low, but there is a Chen Guying that has made Taoist scholarship flourish and in full swing, which shows that "things are man-made." Most importantly, I told Liang Tao that to write a research work with weight, there must be four or five hundred thousand words of research work with weight standing there, and it takes effort to write a decent book. Over the years, there have been no representative works on the study of Xunzi in the academic community. Although some of our scholars are studying the tradition of the "qi theory" school, there are no very representative works devoted to the study of Xunzi. I hope that such academic research works will appear.
(The author is Distinguished Professor of Yuelu College, Hunan University)
This article is the original work of China Reading News, please do not reprint it without permission. Please leave a message for authorization.