Confucian School's Treatises of Human Nature during Pre-Qin Period

Human nature is an important constituent of the Confucianism. To start with Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, this paper makes an analysis of Confucian school's views on human nature in lateral thinking manner. And in vertical thinking manner, the paper makes a comparison between the Confucianism and ancient Greek philosophy. Confucius' proposition, ”Human nature is common but practice makes it different one from another”, was subsequently developed and emphasized by Mencius and Xunzi, who put forward the Good Nature Doctrine (which attached importance to goodness and meditation) and the Evil Nature Doctrine (which attached importance to propriety and law) respectively. However both of them never deviated from Confucius' ethical pattern, whose ultimate motive is to transform the world and administer the country according to the Confucian ethics. Furthermore, given comprehensive consideration, it can be regarded as reverberations of the age that East philosophy and West philosophy are in accord on this matter.