15. Flexing Your Moral Muscles: Xunzi on Moral Cultivation

Xunzi, a thinker who shaped the course of Confucian philosophy by showing how deliberate effort can overcome our wicked natural tendencies.

• E. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text (Princeton: 2014).

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• D.-Q. Chen, 陳大齊. (1953) Mengzi xingshan shuo yu Xunzi xinge shuo de bijiao yaniiu [A Comparative Study of Mengzi’s Theory that Human Nature is Good and Xunzi’s Theory that Human Nature is Bad] (Taipei: 1953).

• C. Fraser, Late Classical Chinese Thought (Oxford: 2023).

• P. Goldin “Xunzi in the Light of the Guodian Manuscripts,” Early China, 25 (2002), 113-46.

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

• T. Kline III and P. Ivanhoe (eds.), Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi (Indianapolis: 2000).

• T. Liang, “Beyond Respecting Mencius and Criticizing Xunzi: A Return to Equal Status for the Two Sages,” Journal of Chinese Humanities, 6 (2020), 43-63.

• F. Perkins, Heaven and Earth are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy (Bloomington & Indianapolis: 2014).

• D. Soles, “The nature and grounds of Xunzi’s disagreement with Mencius,” Asian Philosophy 9 (1999), 123-133.

• W. Sung, “Mencius and Xunzi on Xing,” Philosophy Compass 11 (2016), 632-641.

• B. Van Norden, “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Nature,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1992), 161-84.