Another Look at Xunzi s Xing E (性惡)

The controversy surrounding Xunzi’s notorious assertion that (human) xing is e (evil or bad) does not seem to bring an easy conclusion; some scholars claim that since Xunzi’s notion of xing is different from that of Mencius, what Xunzi really means is not very far from Mencius’s doctrine that human xing is good. Others hold that Xunzi, indeed, advance exactly the opposite philosophical position of Mencius. In this paper, I’d like to suggest a somewhat different approach to the controversy. My approach questions the translation: xing as human nature and e as evil. Xunzi’s position, then, is understood as saying that ‘human nature is evil.’ However, it seems to be not a proper understanding of Xunzi’s doctrine. Once we construe ‘xing e’ as saying that ‘human nature is evil,’ it is most likely to understand xing as essential human nature and e as the one axis of the dualistic structure of good and evil. This view leads us to conclude that Xunzi s theory of ritual and his assertion that one can transform his or her xing into deliberative exertion (僞) are incompatible with his thesis that human xing is e. This paper aims to show that this is not the case by scrutinizing Xunzi s concepts of xing and e. Through this analysis, we can understand what Xunzi s thesis that human xing is e really implies, and situate Xunzi s philosophy in the proper historical context of pre-Qin philosophy