16. To Become or Not to Become: the Confucians on Our Moral Natures

Morality is what makes us humans, for the Confucians: but does morality come from inside us, outside us, or both?

• S. Chan, “Daoist Nature or Confucian Nurture: Moral Development in the Yucong 語叢 (Thicket of Sayings),” in S. Chan (ed.) Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts (Cham: 2019), 259-83.

• S. Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: a Study and Complete Translation, 2 vols (Ithaca: 2012).

• A.C. Graham, “The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature,” in X.S. Liu (ed.) Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi (Indianapolis: 1967, reprint 2002), 1-63.

• E.L.Hutton, “Xunzi on Moral Psychology,” in E.L. Hutton (ed), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi (Dordrecht: 2016), 201-27.

• K. Lai, “Emotional Attachment and Its Limits: Mengzi, Gaozi and the Guodian Discussions,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 14 (2019), 132-51.

• K.-L. Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought (Stanford: 1997).

• A. Stalnaker, “The Mencius-Xunzi Debate in Early Confucian Ethics,” in J.L. Richey (ed.), Teaching Confucianism (New York: 2008), 85-106.