The Comparison Between The Philosophical Thoughts Of Xunzi And Hanfei

On the occasion of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, the traditional slavery society had fallen apart, the emerging class of landlords began to cut a striking figure. In this significant historical and social background, conflicts among the countries continued for years. As the demand of economic and military strength of countries had greatly increased, Legalism which represented the landlord class was paid more attention by the kings who demand of instant success for its short-term utilitarian, and occupied the mainstream ideology of society gradually. At the same time, practicability of the traditional Confucian moral education had been questioned; the system of traditional Confucian began to decline.At this time, XunZi who was an epitomized master of Confucian had noticed the deviation of the other Confucian scholars’ thoughts and the declining of the Confucian’s status in reality. After realizing the lack of the mandatory and timeliness in the Moral Education of Kong and Meng, XunZi began to transform the traditional Confucian. In order to adapt to the needs of the times, XunZi absorbed some Legalist thought, affirmed the pursuit to benefits and the usefulness of laws, do the fusion of Confucian and Legalist, while insisting the basis of Confucian governing with morality. The fusion XunZi did was groundbreaking, there were, however, still contradictions in it. On the one hand, XunZi insisted the "Suppressing the chasing of benefits with moral principle" kingly thought; on the other hand, XunZi’s valuing for the law revealed the orientation to the utilitarian all the time.HanFei’s childe identity in Han country decided that he had to look for the methods which can enrich and strengthen Han country in a short time. Therefore Legalism which aimed at the humanity for benefits was inevitable to be the main content of the thought of HanFei. However it is in doubt what the resource of the thought of HanFei. There is only a record "(HanFei) learned in XunZi with LiSi" in Records of the Grand History of China, and nothing else about the teacher-and-student relationship of XunZi and HanFei in other historical records. Most demonstrations of the relationship rely on historical researching, but more attention should be, in my opinion, paid in the research of the thoughts of the two which discuss on the inheritance of thoughts HanFei to XunZi to explore the fact of the inheritance relationship.There are five parts in this paper. It is mainly based on the analyzing and comparing the ideas and thoughts inside according to the original text in Xunzi and Hanfeizi to find out the similarities and differences between the two. The first chapter is about the background of the thesis of XunZi and HanFei. There are simple descriptions about the trend of the development of the society of that time, and analysis of the subjective conditions of production of their thought. The second chapter is about the analysis and comparison of their theories of human nature. There are demonstrations about the proof and point of XunZi’s "Theory of evil human nature" and HanFei’s "natural theory of human nature" in different sections, and also horizontal comparison to summarize the similarities and differences between the two theories of human nature. The third chapter is the analysis and comparison of their-perspective between justice and benefits, the author analyzed Xunzi’s "Suppressing the chasing of benefits with moral principle" and HanFei’s "Benefits without moral principle" perspectives. Horizontal comparison between the opinions is also an important section in this chapter. In the fourth chapter which compared the views between etiquette and laws, there are discussions about XunZi’s "stress upon etiquettes and laws" view and HanFei’s "Ruled only by laws" standpoint, and the horizontal comparison between them. After analyzing the common points and the different ones, some conclusion appears. The fifth chapter is the last one in which the author investigate the probability and necessity of HanFei’s transforming from XunZi’s Confusion to Legalism in several sections, some simple argument about the practical significances in their theories plays a significant role too.