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Xunzi says the sages invented ritual and rightness. Does that make him a moral anti-realist?

Elif Yıldız Fellow
· 5 replies
Meta-ethicsAfrican & AfricanaChineseConfucianismMenciusMou ZongsanXunzi#constructivism#human-nature#ritual#xunzi
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I came to Xunzi through the debate with Mencius about human nature. That debate is usually told as optimism against pessimism: Mencius thinks we are born with the sprouts of goodness, Xunzi thinks our nature is crooked and goodness comes from deliberate effort.

But reading Xunzi's chapter on ritual, I noticed a meta-ethical claim hiding under the psychological one. He says people are born with desires, desires unmet lead to contention, contention to disorder, and the former kings hated the disorder and so established ritual and rightness to divide things and nourish desires. Morality is something the sages made.

If it was made, is it real? In Western terms I would want to call Xunzi a constructivist: moral facts exist, but as the output of an intelligent procedure rather than as features of the world. On the other hand he plainly does not think the sages could have made anything they liked. Ritual has to actually work, to settle conflict and let people flourish.

So I have three candidate labels and I am not sure which fits:

  1. Anti-realist: morality is a human invention, full stop.
  2. Constructivist: morality is constructed, but some constructions are correct.
  3. A naturalist realist in disguise: the facts about what makes human communities work are perfectly real, and the sages discovered them.

Which reading do people find most convincing? And does the label matter, or is this a case where the Western categories just do not fit?

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5 answers

  1. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    I would choose your second option with a strong lean toward the third. Xunzi's favourite images are the potter and the carpenter: clay does not become a pot by itself, and warped wood needs the steaming frame to become straight. The pot is an artefact, but not every artefact holds water. The sages are like great engineers, and engineering is constrained by reality.

    That makes him very different from a Mackie-style anti-realist. He thinks ordinary moral claims are true, and that people who reject ritual are getting something wrong about how to live together.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Lin Pei-shan

    Fellow

    For balance, the Neo-Confucian tradition after Zhu Xi took Mencius as orthodox and treated Xunzi with suspicion, and twentieth-century New Confucians such as Mou Zongsan continued that, centring the moral mind Mencius describes. On their view, Xunzi locates morality outside the heart, and that is precisely his mistake.

    So whether he is an anti-realist depends on what you think morality is supposed to be. If it must be rooted in the mind, Xunzi looks like he has given up on it. If it can be a learned achievement, he looks like a realist about what is worth achieving.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    There is an African parallel worth having beside this. Wiredu argued that Akan ethics is humanistic: it grounds morality in human interests and well-being rather than in the will of a deity or in a separate realm of moral facts. That made some colleagues call him a relativist, which he was not. He thought the requirement to harmonise interests is universal for any human community.

    I suspect Xunzi and Wiredu sit in the same uncomfortable place: morality as a human construction answering to non-negotiable facts about human life. Option 2 and option 3 may be the same view described from two ends.

    1. Elif Yıldız

      Fellow

      Kwame's “same view described from two ends” is very helpful. I think I will stop asking whether Xunzi is a realist and ask instead what the sages' constructions answer to. Chen says reality; Pei-shan reminds me that some would say “the heart”. Those are different standards, and that seems to be where the real disagreement with Mencius lives.

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  4. Ji-woo Ryu

    Fellow

    In Korea, Xunzi barely appears in school ethics, because the Joseon scholars inherited Zhu Xi's judgement of him. My students know Mencius's child at the well and nothing from Xunzi. Elif's question makes me think that is a loss. A student who thinks morality was made by people is often told she is a relativist, when Xunzi shows a third possibility: made by people, and still capable of being made well or badly.

    Helpful · 1