Xunzi's Conception Of Sage

This paper will explore Xunzi's view of Sages on the setting of ideal personality of pre-Qin Confucianism and attempt to comprehensively and systematically present sages' views on Ideal Personality, which was proposed by Xunzi, the last great Confucianist in the period of pre-Qin.Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, the representatives of Confucianism, all presented many domains of ideal personality, the major categories of which were sages, men of virtue and gentlemen. Among of them, sages were ranked at the highest level of ideal personality of pre-Qin Confucianism. Confucius put forth a fundamental pattern of ideal personality in pre-Qin Confucianism-sage outside the king; while Mencius and Xunzi developed this theory from different aspects and each of them represented a different evolution of Confucianism.This paper will systematically illustrate Xunzi's view on sages from the following four main aspects: the background of times,the basis of theories, the features of characteristics and the approaches of fulfilment, and focuse on analysing the features of the integration of knowledge and etiquette, the equivalence of sages and kings and the acme of perfection, strengthening that to be a sage is achievable via studying. This paper will also explore the similarities and differences of Mencius' and Xunzi's views on sages and hope that this comparison can make contributions to a better understanding of Xunzi's views.Finally, this paper will point out that Xunzi' view on sages not only have a profound influence on the later ages of Confucianism but also have outstanding realistic meaning with his view conceived significant thoughts, including the ideologis of education and etiquette.