On The Comparison Of Thoughts Between Xunzi And Wangchong

Xunzi and Wangchong were both prominent materialists in ancient China. They made outstanding contributions to Chinese materialistic atheism in their respective eras. For the seek of criticizing the idealism and ghosts and gods' superstition, Xunzi and Wangchong set up their own theories on the foundation of the viewpoint about the spontaneous way of Heaven, which made the two people have similar thoughts in many aspects. So their theories are great comparative. To study the consistency and differences of the thoughts between Xunzi and Wangchong will contribute to clearly holding the development of Chinese materialism atheism history, and then enrich and expand the content of the history of Chinese ideology culture.The consistency of the thoughts on the surface layer between Xunzi and Wang Chong is shown by academic views and social political ideology; The profound consistency is reflected in the aspect of epistemology; The consistency of the world outlook and the conception of social history is the foundation and origin of them. That is to say, the identity of the world outlook and the conception of history on the foundation of the spontaneous way of Heaven makes Xunzi and Wangchong have unanimous view of the epistemology. Thus their common understanding on the academic thoughts and social political ideology is formed finally.In academic thoughts, Xunzi and WangChong analysed and criticized rationally the theory of "hundred philosophers" in Pre-Qin period, the phenomena of offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods for good fortune in society. And they classified Confucian of the intellectuals, appraised their social function, emphasized the their great social responsibility of undertaking the morality and justice, of beautifying the social customs, of writing compositions and of participating in political affairs to make contributions. In social political ideology, Xunzi and Wangchong both realized that the material wealth influenced on the society, and so they maintained a social ideology of saving social wealth, paying attention to justice as well as profit, laying equal stress both on hegemony and reign, constructing concurrently the rites and laws.In epistemology thoughts, Xunzi and Wangchong both paid attention to realizing rational knowledge from perception, then to the inspection of knowing, laid stress on the scientific attitude from practice to practice again. In world outlook and social conception of history, because Xunzi and Wangchong both admited the spontaneous way of Heaven which separates from the way of human, they cared for humanity on the aspect of human's essence and the relations of human to Heaven. In conception of history, they stressed on the impacts of objective material factor on the history development. They held a social development view that the present age was better than the past, besides, mixing contradictorily with the historicism.In the end, the article analyses about the difference on the thought of Xunzi and Wangchong.The two people had different views on the thoughts of Heaven severable with human, on the standard of appraising human, on the power of criticism spirits and the view treating with the auspicious problem. What they did reflected a spirit that is called "and but different". I talk about the reason caused consistency of the thoughts between Xunzi and Wangchong in the rest part.