In this essay, I will focus on the capacities for human goodness found in human nature by Mencius and defend his views against the attacks of Xunzi. While Mencius focused on the good in human nature, Xunzi focused on the bad in human nature.
I readily admit that Xunzi’s overall view on human nature is more complete and that his focus on the bad aspects is justified, but I disagree with him over the view that human goodness is an artifice one needs to add by outside forcing. Rather, I take Mencius’ view and believe that artifices are used to extend innate human capacities for goodness.
Central to Mencius’ view on human nature is his view that all people have a heart and corresponding capacities for goodness. The heart has four basic qualities enabling one to act: compassion, shame, deference and judgment. Each of these initial capacities of the heart can be attended to and extended into the virtues of benevolence, duty, ritual and wisdom, respectively. Failure to become a virtuous human being results from either neglecting to nourish these capacities or from harmful external forces or circumstances.
Mencius demonstrates that all people have hearts by appealing to the example of an infant about to fall into a well. Mencius says that as soon as people see the infant about to fall “they will all have hearts of worry and compassion”(Robins 2A/6). It’s important to notice that Mencius is not speaking about any kind of action here but about the immediate response (Mencius IEP). These feelings of shock and sympathy are not due to seeking praise or wanting to reduce annoyance. This response justifies Mencius’ claim: “People all have hearts that do not tolerate the suffering of others”(2A/6).
Once having established that all people have hearts, Mencius is able to explain what the heart consists of. The heart consists of compassion, shame, deference and judgment. Mencius compares these to sprouts or beginnings of the virtues: “A heart of compassion is the beginning of benevolence. A heart of shame is the beginning of duty. A heart of deference is the beginning of ritual. A heart of judgment is the beginning of wisdom”(2A/6). Mencius says that having these capacities is as natural as having limbs. Thus, the four capacities of compassion, shame, deference and judgment are a part of every human’s fabric.
These initial capacities or sprouts are not to be neglected. They must be developed and nourished. Only then will benevolence, duty, ritual and wisdom become manifest. Mencius compares the four capacities to a “fire beginning to burn or a spring beginning to well up”(2A/6). Attending to our natural abilities of compassion, shame, deference and judgment will allow us to display benevolence, be dutiful, follow rituals and become wise.
This attending should not lead one to the mistaken belief that these virtues are not internal. Mencius does not believe that these four results were artificial external additions; they are natural extensions: “Benevolence, duty, ritual and wisdom are not welded into us from the outside, we originally have them; it’s just that we have not attended to them”(6A/6).
Since Mencius holds that these capacities enabling human goodness are internal to our nature, one might wonder how it is possible for people to not do what is good. Mencius says, “it is not the fault of their capacities” and he speaks of several ways about how this failing to do good can come about (6A/6). Two such ways are bad circumstances and not attending to the four beginnings. Mencius provides a list when speaking about planting and cultivating barley. Season after season the barley will mature in the same way, but if it should differ Mencius says: “Even if there are respects in which they differ, then there is some inequality in the richness of the ground, in the nourishment provided by rain and dew, or in human effort”(6A/7).
Thus, Mencius concludes here that people are of the same kind and resemble each other. They have the same nature, but are affected in differ ways because of improper conditions of living or improper effort to nourish one’s sprouts.
In addition, Mencius compares the goodness of human nature to water’s tendency to go down. All people have this tendency as Mencius says: “There are no people who are not good, there is no water that does not go down”(6A/2). To the question “if this is so, that human nature is good, why do people not always do good?” Mencius says that outside circumstances ultimately cause people to do wrong, just as we can block the path of water’s flow and push it uphill, going against water’s natural tendency, so we can do the same with our own nature.
Therefore, in attending to our capacities we let them flow through their natural channels and keep them from being blocked. The norms or standards that society adheres to are put into place to allow us to attend properly to our capacities and are not to hinder us.
I think it’s important that Mencius believes that human beings have certain innate capacities for goodness. If we did not have these capacities, I do not think any amount of education could impose these onto us. In this respect, I do think that education is a kind of focused attending. Contrary to Mencius, I do not think that the bad is solely imposed from outside for the same reason above, namely, I do not think that any amount of harm could impose wrong tendencies on us if we did not first have capacities to do wrong.
In contrast to Mencius, Xunzi writes: “Man’s nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity”(Watson, 161). How can people become good? They invent artifices such as learning and rituals to transform their nature. Xunzi believes that human beings are born with a fondness of profit, feelings of envy and hate and desires for beautiful sights and sounds. With no teachers human beings are inclined toward evil and lack order. Xunzi says: “any man who follows his nature and indulges his emotions will inevitably become involved in wrangling and strife, will violate the forms and rules of society, and will end as a criminal”(161). Thus, Xunzi is focused on the initial capacities for badness that human beings have and thinks that this must be corrected with teaching and ritual.
Xunzi draws a fundamental distinction between what is a human being’s nature and what is artifice. Xunzi states: “The part of man which cannot be learned or acquired by effort is called the nature; that part of him which can be acquired by learning and brought to completion by effort is called conscious activity”(163). Desiring satisfaction when hungry, desiring warmth when cold and desiring rest when weary are examples of what Xunzi considers being natural human desires.
Xunzi shows how conscious activity can go against nature in an example of a hungry man who does not dare eat first in the presence of elders despite being hungry. Xunzi concludes from this: “courtesy and humility in fact run counter to man’s emotional nature”(164). Thus, Xunzi believes that what belongs to our nature is spontaneous and “that which does not come into being instinctively, but must wait for some activity to bring into being is called the product of conscious activity”(165).
These artifices were ritual principles produced by the sage kings to quell what Xunzi considers being man’s natural tendency towards chaos and irresponsibility. The ritual principles and regulations are to transform human nature and bring its desires into the proper channels. In transforming human nature, the artifices are like a kind of addition to human nature rather than an extension of human nature, yet once this addition is incorporated acting good becomes a kind of second nature. Xunzi does not want us to believe that this second nature is already in us.
Xunzi writes: “Someone may ask whether ritual principles and concerted conscious activity are not themselves a part of man’s nature, so that for that reason the sage is capable of producing them”(168). Xunzi uses an example of a potter who molds clay to produce an earthen pot, and says “The sage stands in the same relation to ritual principles as the potter to the things he molds and produces” to demonstrate how ritual principles and conscious activity are not a part of human nature (168). Xunzi says that molding clay is not a part of human nature and so, in an analogous manner, the process of creating rituals and the like is not a part of human nature.
Having explained Xunzi’s views, I will now try to respond to Xunzi’s objections to Mencius and show where Xunzi went wrong. First, Xunzi attacks the Mencian view that humans are capable of learning because their nature is good. Xunzi writes that this “indicates that he has not really understood man’s nature nor distinguished properly between the basic nature and conscious activity”(162). This is similar the issue above where Xunzi rejects the view that conscious activity is part of human nature.
Xunzi goes wrong in several ways. I don’t think we can give the same status to objects such as pots and ritual principles. One is concrete; the other is of a different nature. I also think that the capacity to mold clay is a part of human nature or else we’d not be able to mold clay. For example, a tiger cannot mold clay pots. A tiger does not even have the potential ability to do so. What is artificial are the ways we choose to mold the pot and the pots themselves. What is artificial are the ways we decide to extend our innate capacities for goodness and the particular books and rituals we use.
Second, Xunzi attacks Mencius’ view that human nature is good and that evil arises when human beings lose their original nature. Xunzi says: “It is the way with man’s nature that as soon as he is born he begins to depart from his original naïveté and simplicity, and therefore he must inevitably lose what Mencius regards as his original nature”(163). Xunzi seems to have focused entirely on the bad capacities of human beings and ignored the good capacities. He might have good reasons for this, and I will mention this later. However, Xunzi’s view cannot hold here if one recognizes that people do have good capacities and that artifices are used for extending human capacities for goodness rather than adding capacities for goodness that were not previously part of human nature as I mentioned in the paragraph above.
Lastly, Xunzi believes that if Mencius was right about human goodness, then there would have been no need for the sage kings to create rituals. Xunzi states: “Now suppose that man’s nature was in fact intrinsically upright, reasonable, and orderly-then what need would there be for sage kinds and ritual principles?”(166). This is a decent objection to Mencius, and I do think that the principles arose because order was needed and is needed, but Mencius does not say that human beings always do what is right. Mencius stresses that people have a heart with all the capacities for goodness, but people can do wrong because of circumstances, which Xunzi should not entirely disagree with seeing that he himself stresses hanging out with the right people and putting oneself in a good environment.
To conclude, I see the fundamental point of difference between Mencius and Xunzi over human nature to be over the issue of whether human goodness is an innate capacity needing extension or a capacity needing to be added by artifice. I believe that, on this point, Mencius is correct, but I think that we do use artifices to help extend this innate goodness. I don’t even think we could come up with artifices having to do with goodness if we first did not have some capacity for goodness.
All this being said for a Mencius victory on the sprouts of goodness, I do think Xunzi developed a more complete theory on human nature, with his explication of desires and their satisfaction, and I probably side with him in that it might be the case that our tendencies are initially sided with our bad capacities that he stresses. Ultimatley, both thinkers are kind of one-sided and need to be combined and maybe read the Zhuangzi.
Works Cited
Mencius. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/mencius/
Mencius. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/mencius.htm
2008. The Mencius. .
Watson, Burton. 2003. Xunzi: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press.
Xunzi. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/xunzi/
