What is "xunzi"

Xunzi may refer to:

• Xunzi (book) (荀子), an ancient Chinese collection of philosophical writings attributed to the below figure
• Xun Kuang (荀況), a 3rd-century BC philosopher and teacher, known as "Master Xun" ("Xunzi"), to whom the Xunzi is traditionally attributed

The Xunzi is an ancient Chinese collection of philosophical writings attributed to the 3rd century BC Realist Confucian philosopher Xun Kuang. In the Xunzi, Xun Kuang distinguishes what is born in man and what must be learned through rigorous education. Though Confucian, the Xunzi may also be considered a root canonical writing of the Chinese Legalist "School". Its essays are often critical of competing schools, such as Daoism and Mohism, as well as rival schools within Confucianism. Some of the more significant chapters are

• The "Discussion of Heaven (天 tiān)" rejects the Mencian notion that heaven has a moral will. Instead, Xun Zi asserts that heaven is simply the natural world; thus people should focus on the human, social realm rather than dealing with heavenly ideas.
• The "Discussion of Ritual Propriety (lĭ)" gives rules of individual and social conduct (decorum).
• "Dispelling Obsessions" teaches that in focusing on only one aspect of a situation, one often loses sight of the larger purpose.
• " Proper Use of Terms" (正名 zhēngmíng): A name becomes proper for a situation through conventional usage, but once this is fixed it is improper to deviate from this norm. Thus a conventional view is adopted for the origin of the sound-to-meaning mapping, although the objects signified by the term remain real.

:*The term Zhēngmíng often appears in English as "The Rectification of Names". This is a misleadingly narrow translation of the Chinese title. In classical Chinese, the phrase "正名 (zhēngmíng)" could be interpreted either as "rectifying names" or as "correct/right names".

• "Human Dispositions are Detestable" (性恶 xìng è) Rejects Mencius' claim that people have a natural inclination toward goodness. Confucius, who simply said that people are similar by nature, was not clear on the matter. Xunzi holds that man is naturally inclined towards selfishness, and that if this inclination is not curbed, human societies devolve into chaos. He views morality as a social construct, emphasizing the difference between nature and nurture.

This last view engendered considerable debate over two centuries.

In the first century AD, Liu Xiang redacted Xunzi's extant oeuvre from hundreds of loose fascicles into 32 bundles of bamboo strips. In 818 AD, an unknown minor official named Yang Liang fixed many errors in the bamboo strips which had accumulated over the centuries, transcribing them on scrolls of silk and adding commentary which modern scholars have found helpful. Yang's commentary still appears in some modern editions of the text. The text has been continuously in print since the invention of the printing press in the 11th century AD.