Philosophers · 哲學家 · China
Xunzi 荀子 · 荀況 Xun Kuang
The most systematic of the early Confucians, who held that human nature is bad and civilization a hard-won artifact, and whose two most famous students helped to build the empire he would have hated.
早期儒者當中最有系統的一位；他主張人性是惡的，文明是一件得來不易的人造物。他最有名的兩個學生，幫忙建造了一個他會憎惡的帝國。
- Born 出生
- c. 310 BCE, in the state of Zhao
- Died 去世
- c. 235 BCE, Lanling, in Chu
- Names 姓名
- Xun Kuang 荀況; also called Xun Qing 荀卿, “Minister Xun”
- Posts 職位
- Three times libationer (head) of the Jixia Academy in Qi; magistrate of Lanling
- The book 著作
- Xunzi 荀子, 32 chapters, mostly by his own hand
- Students 學生
- Han Fei and Li Si
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
The senior teacher at Jixia 稷下的「最為老師」
Xunzi was born about 310 BCE in Zhao, in the north, a generation after Mencius. Sima Qian says that he came to Qi to study at the age of fifty, though some scholars think the figure should be fifteen. Qi was then the intellectual center of China. Its kings maintained a kind of academy near the Ji gate of the capital, where scholars of every school were given houses and stipends and were expected only to debate. Daoists, Mohists, logicians, and experts on yin and yang all taught there. By the time the older generation had died, the historian says, Xunzi was “the most senior teacher,” and he was three times chosen as its libationer, the scholar who led the ceremonial offering and so the head of the gathering.
荀子大約西元前 310 年生於北方的趙國，比孟子晚一代。司馬遷說他「年五十始來游學於齊」，不過有些學者認為那個數字應該是十五。齊國當時是中國的思想中心。齊王在都城的稷門附近，維持著一種學宮；各家各派的學者在那裡得到宅第與俸祿，唯一被期待的事就是辯論。道家、墨家、名家與陰陽家的專家，都在那裡講學。這位史家說，等到老一輩都去世了，荀子「最為老師」；他三度被選為祭酒，也就是主持祭奠之禮、因而是這個群體之首的那位學者。
The setting shaped him. He knew every rival doctrine at first hand, and his book answers them one by one: Mozi was blinded by utility, Zhuangzi by Heaven, the logician Hui Shi by words. He believed that each had seen a corner of the truth and mistaken it for the whole, and that only the Confucian way, properly understood, was complete.
這個環境塑造了他。每一種與之競爭的學說，他都有第一手的了解；而他的書逐一回應了它們：墨子蔽於用，莊子蔽於天，名家的惠施蔽於辭。他相信，每一家都看見了真理的一角，卻誤以為那是全部；只有恰當理解下的儒家之道，才是完整的。
A visit to Qin 入秦
He traveled, as Confucius and Mencius had, and with no more success. The most revealing journey was to Qin, the western state that was then conquering its neighbors one by one. He was the only major Confucian to see it. The chief minister asked what he had observed. Xunzi replied with striking fairness. The people were simple and afraid of the officials. The officials were grave, frugal, and honest. Business at court was dispatched without delay. It was the height of good order. And yet, he said, measured against the standard of a true king it fell far short, and the reason was that it had almost no Confucians. Qin had law and lacked the moral education that makes people good from within. He called it a state that could be feared and could not be loved.
他像孔子與孟子那樣周遊列國，成果也並不更多。最能看出他這個人的一趟旅程，是到秦國去；那個西方的國家，當時正在一個接一個地征服鄰國。重要的儒者當中，只有他親眼見過它。秦相問他看到了什麼。荀子的回答公允得驚人。百姓樸實，畏懼官吏。官吏肅然、儉約而清廉。朝廷上的事務處理起來毫不拖延。那是治理得極好的樣子。然而，他說，拿真正王者的標準來衡量，它還差得遠；原因是它幾乎沒有儒者。秦有法，卻缺少那種使人從內在變好的道德教化。他說那是一個讓人畏懼、卻無法讓人愛的國家。
He was slandered in Qi and moved south to Chu, where the lord of Chunshen made him magistrate of Lanling. When his patron was assassinated in 238 he lost the post, and he stayed in Lanling teaching and writing until he died. He was buried there.
他在齊國遭人讒毀，南下到了楚國；春申君任命他為蘭陵令。西元前 238 年，他的這位庇護者被刺殺，他失去了職位；他留在蘭陵教書、寫作，直到去世。他就葬在那裡。
Two students and a reputation 兩個學生，與一個名聲
Among those who came to Lanling were a prince of Han named Han Fei and a clerk from Chu named Li Si. Han Fei became the greatest theorist of the Legalist school, which held that the state should be run by law, reward, and punishment, with no reliance on virtue. Li Si became chief minister of Qin, helped its king to conquer the other states and declare himself First Emperor in 221, and in 213 proposed the burning of the books of the philosophers. Before that he had brought about the death of his fellow student, Han Fei, in a Qin prison. Xunzi is said to have refused to eat on hearing that Li Si had taken office in Qin, foreseeing how it would end.
到蘭陵來的人當中，有一位韓國的公子韓非，以及一位來自楚國的小吏李斯。韓非成了法家最偉大的理論家；法家主張，國家應該靠法、賞與罰來治理，完全不倚靠德。李斯成了秦的丞相，幫助秦王征服了其他各國，並在西元前 221 年自立為始皇帝；西元前 213 年，他提議焚燒諸子之書。在那之前，他已經在秦國的獄中，促成了同門韓非的死。據說荀子聽到李斯入秦為官的消息，就不肯進食，因為他預見了事情會怎麼收場。
The connection damaged him permanently. For the first thousand years of the empire he was read and respected as much as Mencius. When the Song philosophers chose Mencius as the true heir of Confucius, they condemned Xunzi for his doctrine of human nature and for his students, and his book dropped out of the curriculum. His tablet was removed from the Confucian temple in 1530. Modern scholars have restored him, as the early Confucian who argued most carefully and who saw most clearly what institutions do.
這層關係永久地損害了他。在帝國的頭一千年裡，他被閱讀、被尊重的程度不亞於孟子。等到宋代的哲學家選定孟子為孔子真正的繼承者，他們就因為荀子的人性論與他的學生而譴責他；他的書也從課程裡消失了。1530 年，他的牌位被移出了孔廟。現代的學者使他恢復了地位：他是早期儒者當中論證最謹慎、也最看清楚「制度做了什麼」的一位。
- c. 310 BCEBorn in Zhao生於趙
- c. 280–265At the Jixia Academy in Qi在齊國稷下
- c. 264Visits Qin入秦
- c. 255Magistrate of Lanling任蘭陵令
- 238Loses his post; stays to teach失官；留下教學
- c. 235Dies at Lanling卒於蘭陵
- 221His student Li Si helps unify China他的學生李斯協助統一中國
- 1530Removed from the Confucian temple被移出孔廟
The central idea · 核心觀念
Goodness is made 善是做出來的
Xunzi’s best-known sentence is “Human nature is bad. Its goodness is the product of deliberate effort.” He means that what we are born with, appetite, envy, and the love of gain, leads to conflict if it is simply followed, and that everything admirable in human life has been achieved against that pull. His book opens with the consequence: “Learning must never stop. Blue dye comes from the indigo plant and is bluer than the plant. Ice is made from water and is colder than water.” A person is raw material, and education can make of him something better than the material. The method is accumulation. “If you do not pile up small steps, you cannot go a thousand li. If you carve and give up, you cannot cut through rotten wood. If you carve and do not give up, you can engrave metal and stone.”
荀子最廣為人知的一句話是：「人之性惡，其善者偽也。」他的意思是：我們生來就有的東西（欲望、嫉妒與好利），如果只是順著它走，會導向衝突；而人類生活裡一切值得敬佩的東西，都是逆著那股拉力成就的。他的書一開頭就說出了由此而來的結論：「學不可以已。青，取之於藍，而青於藍；冰，水為之，而寒於水。」人是原料；而教育可以把他造就成比原料更好的東西。方法是積累。「不積跬步，無以至千里……鍥而舍之，朽木不折；鍥而不舍，金石可鏤。」
What we accumulate is ritual, the forms of conduct worked out by the sages. Xunzi gives the fullest defense of ritual in Chinese thought. It assigns each person a place and a share and so ends contention. It also shapes feeling. Mourning rites, he says, are set up “in proportion to the emotion,” so that grief has a form and a limit. He is as original about nature. “Heaven’s course is constant. It does not exist for the sake of Yao or perish because of Jie.” The sky sends no messages. Asked why it rains after the rain sacrifice, he answers, “For no reason. It is the same as when it rains without the sacrifice.” People perform such rites to give form to their concern. “The gentleman regards them as culture, and the common people regard them as supernatural.” Order and disorder come from human beings, and it is our business to manage what Heaven provides.
我們所積累的是禮，也就是聖人制定出來的行為形式。在中國思想裡，荀子為禮作了最完整的辯護。禮給每個人分派一個位置、一份所得，因而止息了爭奪。它也塑造情感。他說，喪禮是「稱情而立文」，使悲傷有一個形式、一個限度。他談「天」也同樣有原創性。「天行有常，不為堯存，不為桀亡。」天並不傳遞訊息。有人問，舉行求雨的祭祀之後下了雨，是為什麼？他回答：「無何也，猶不雩而雨也。」人們舉行這類儀式，是為了給自己的關切一個形式。「君子以為文，而百姓以為神。」治與亂來自人；而經營天所提供的東西，是我們自己的事。
Heaven’s course is constant. It does not exist for the sake of Yao or perish because of Jie. Respond to it with order and there is good fortune. Respond to it with disorder and there is misfortune.天行有常，不為堯存，不為桀亡。應之以治則吉，應之以亂則凶。
Yao was the best of the ancient kings and Jie the worst. Nature treats them alike. 堯是古代最好的君王，桀是最壞的。自然對兩人一視同仁。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Where did the sages come from? 聖人是從哪裡來的？
If human nature is bad, the first sages had the same nature as everyone else, and it is hard to see how they could have invented goodness. Xunzi raises the objection himself and answers that the sages differed from others in accumulated thought and effort and were born with the same nature. A potter is no different in substance from the clay he shapes. Critics have not been satisfied. To want to bring order out of chaos, and to care enough to devise rites that nourish everyone, already looks like a good impulse, and if the sages had it by nature, then nature is not wholly bad. Mencius would say that Xunzi has smuggled the four sprouts back in under the name of intelligence.
如果人性是惡的，那麼最初的聖人跟每個人有同樣的性；就很難看出他們怎麼能發明出善來。荀子自己提出了這個反駁，並且回答：聖人與別人不同的地方，在於積累的思慮與努力；他們生來的性是相同的。陶匠在本質上，跟他所塑造的陶土並無不同。批評者並沒有被滿足。想要從混亂中建立秩序、並且在乎到去制定「養」每一個人的禮，這看起來已經是一種善的衝動了；而如果聖人生來就有它，那麼性就不完全是惡的。孟子會說：荀子是用「知」的名義，把四端偷運了回來。
The second objection is the one his students made by their careers. If people are moved by desire and goodness comes only from outside, the quickest way to good behavior is to arrange rewards and punishments, and moral education is a slow and uncertain detour. Han Fei drew that conclusion. Xunzi rejected it. He held that ritual transforms a person so that he comes to love what is right, and that a state run on fear, like Qin, has order without loyalty and will not last. On the facts he was proved correct within a generation. The question remains whether his premises entitled him to the hope.
第二個反駁，是他的學生用他們的事業提出來的。如果人是被欲望推動的，而善只從外面來，那麼通往良好行為最快的路，就是安排賞與罰；而道德教化，是一條緩慢而沒有把握的彎路。韓非得出了那個結論。荀子拒絕了它。他主張，禮會轉化一個人，使他變得愛好「對的事」；而一個靠恐懼運作的國家，像秦那樣，有秩序而沒有忠誠，是不會長久的。就事實而言，不出一代，他就被證明是對的。留下來的問題是：他的那些前提，是否使他有資格抱這個希望？
How we know · 史料
A book that was nearly lost to neglect 一本差點因為被冷落而失傳的書
Unlike the Analects and the Mencius, the Xunzi consists mostly of sustained essays on set topics, with titles such as “An Exhortation to Learning,” “Discourse on Heaven,” and “Dispelling Blindness,” and most scholars accept that the bulk of it is his own writing. That makes it the first book of philosophical prose in Chinese by a single author arguing a case from start to finish. The text was put in order by the Han librarian Liu Xiang, who reduced several hundred bundles of bamboo strips, many of them duplicates, to thirty-two chapters. A few of the later chapters are collections of sayings and stories that may come from his school.
跟《論語》與《孟子》不同，《荀子》大部分是針對既定題目的長篇論文，題目像是〈勸學〉〈天論〉〈解蔽〉；多數學者接受，其中的主體是他自己寫的。這使它成為中文裡第一部由單一作者、從頭到尾論證一個主張的哲學散文著作。這個文本是漢代主管圖書的劉向整理的；他把好幾百捆竹簡（其中許多是重複的）刪定為三十二篇。較晚的幾篇是語錄與故事的彙編，可能出自他的學派。
Because he fell out of favor, the book was little copied and received its first commentary only in 818 CE, more than a thousand years after it was written. Much of it was unread for long stretches, which has left the text in better condition than its reputation: few people cared enough to alter it.
因為他失了寵，這本書很少被傳抄，直到西元 818 年才有了第一部註解；那已經是成書一千多年之後了。有很長的時間，它的大部分沒有人讀；這使文本的狀況比它的名聲更好：沒有多少人在乎到要去改動它。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Xunzi and the Buddha 荀子與佛陀
Xunzi is the early Chinese philosopher closest to the Buddha in his picture of the untrained mind and in his trust in training. Both begin from desire as the source of conflict. Both hold that what we are at birth is unreliable and that a person is made by sustained practice, step upon step. Both strip the sky of moral agency: Xunzi’s Heaven that does not answer the rain sacrifice has a counterpart in the Buddha’s teaching that no rite, bath, or offering purifies a person and that only conduct does. And Xunzi’s account of how the mind comes to know the Way reads like a manual of meditation. The mind, he says, must be “empty, unified, and still.” Empty means that what one has already stored does not get in the way of what one is about to receive. Unified means that one thing is not allowed to disturb another. Still means that dreams and fancies do not disorder knowing.
在早期的中國哲學家當中，荀子對「未經訓練的心」的描繪、以及他對訓練的信任，最接近佛陀。兩人都從「欲望是衝突的來源」出發。兩人都主張，我們生來的樣子靠不住；人是由持續的、一步一步的修習造就的。兩人都把道德上的作為從「天」那裡拿走：荀子那個不回應求雨祭祀的天，在佛陀那裡有對應：沒有任何儀式、沐浴或供品能淨化一個人，只有行為可以。而荀子說明「心如何認識道」的那一段，讀起來像一本禪修手冊。他說，心必須「虛壹而靜」。虛，是不讓已經收藏的東西妨礙將要接受的東西。壹，是不讓這一樣擾亂那一樣。靜，是不讓夢想與雜念攪亂了知。
They part over what is to be done with desire. Xunzi’s rites exist to nourish desires, to give them objects in due measure so that wants and goods “sustain each other and grow.” He thought it foolish to try to reduce or remove desire, and criticized thinkers who proposed it. The Buddha holds that craving itself, however well regulated, is the root of suffering and can be brought to an end. Xunzi’s goal is a well-ordered society of people whose desires have been civilized. The Buddha’s is the release of a mind in which craving has ceased. The two could agree about the first precepts and the value of a rule of life, and would disagree about how far the training should go (Dharma and the West, D18 and D25).
他們在「該拿欲望怎麼辦」上分道揚鑣。荀子的禮，存在的目的是「養」欲：給欲望有分寸的對象，使欲與物「相持而長」。他認為試圖減少或去除欲望是愚蠢的，並且批評過提出這種主張的思想家。佛陀主張：渴愛本身，不管調節得多好，都是苦的根，而且可以止息。荀子的目標，是一個由「欲望已經被教化」的人組成的井然有序的社會。佛陀的目標，是一顆渴愛已經止息的心的解脫。兩人可以在最初的幾條戒與「生活要有規矩」的價值上意見一致；而對於這個訓練該走多遠，則會意見分歧（佛法與西方哲學 D18、D25）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Ch. 偽 wěi
What is achieved by conscious human activity, as opposed to what is inborn.
由有意識的人為活動所成就的東西，相對於天生的東西。
Ch. 禮 lǐ
For Xunzi, the system of forms and divisions devised by the sages to end contention and shape feeling.
對荀子來說，是聖人為了止爭與塑造情感而制定的那一套形式與分別。
Ch. 分 fèn
The allotment of roles and shares that makes group life possible.
使群體生活成為可能的角色與份額的分派。
Ch. 積 jī
The piling up of small efforts by which character is formed.
一點一點努力的堆積；品格由此養成。
Ch. 天 tiān
In Xunzi, the regular course of nature, which has no purposes and takes no sides.
在荀子，指自然有常的運行；它沒有目的，也不偏袒誰。
Ch. 解蔽 jiěbì
Freeing the mind from fixation on one part of the truth.
使心不再執著於真理的某一部分。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What does Xunzi mean by saying that goodness is the product of deliberate effort?
2. What is his view of Heaven?
3. Why did his reputation fall after the Song dynasty?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Xunzi, Chinese text at the Chinese Text Project ↗Begin with chapters 1, 17, 19, and 23. 從〈勸學〉〈天論〉〈禮論〉〈性惡〉讀起。
- Xunzi: The Complete Text, translated by Eric L. Hutton (2014)The standard English translation. 標準的英譯本。
- Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, chapter 74 ↗His biography shares the chapter with Mencius. 他的傳與孟子同在一篇。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Xunzi” ↗