Emotions in the thought of Xunzi = 荀子思想中的情感研究

Abstract

Xunzi was an important Confucian thinker in the Warring States period of China. In this thesis, I try to analyze how Xunzi understands the emotions of human beings so that we might have a better interpretation of his overall ethical thought. First, I try to present a detailed analysis of Xunzi's understanding of our basic emotions, namely, joy, anger, and sadness. By investigating most of the passages in the Xunzi that are related to these emotions, I point out Xunzi’s views on our emotions: We are all born with these emotions. Also, emotions are necessary for every one of us and that is why we should not suppress all of them. However, our inborn emotions are without any moral order. Thus, they will naturally be chaotic and tend to result in negative consequences. So, we should never allow the natural indulgence of our native emotions. We should transform our problematic natural emotions according to the liyi (ritual propriety and righteousness) and learn to express them in an appropriate way. I then bring other key concepts, like xing (nature) and wei (artifice), in the Xunzi into discussion. Based on some analyses of other scholars, I suggest that our natural emotion is a part of xing, and hua (transforming) our original emotions is actually one of the key steps in wei and moral practice. Through these analyses, we are able to have a better understanding on Xunzi’s famous claim of “people’s xing is bad.” Finally, I discuss the role that emotions play in our moral cultivation and good life. According to Xunzi, it is impossible to live well without being morally good. Since the appropriate transformation and expression of emotions is an important part of moral goodness, the emotion is also essential for a good life. While some emotions are necessary for us to live a good life, some of them are obstacles to it. In order to have a good life, we should cultivate our emotions in accordance with the liyi, and lessen the instances of emotions that are against the liyi. At last, what Xunzi reminds us is that, being morally good is already the best and only way for us to achieve true happiness and live well, even though our life is a bit uncertain after all.