Nature And Instruction

How to live in the world reasonably for people has been the important topic of Confucian philosophy. So Confucianism is known as humanism. As humanism, Confucianism advocates to perfect the human nature, achievements in life, so the topic about the nature of human is the cornerstone and roots of the Confucian philosophy of life.The thoughts of human nature of the Confucian originated from Confucius, Confucius said:"Men are born about the same, but habits make them differ." But Confucius did not give a detailed exposition and definition of the specific content of human nature. This interpretation left a vast development space of the theory of human nature for the later scholars. Mencius and Xunzi are both claimed to be learned from Confucius, they have carried on the deep discussion on this problem and published their own views, successively.Mencius has contributed greatly to the development of Confucian’s theory of human nature. He answered the specific content of human nature, for the first time, and he believed that human nature is the essential moral difference between man and beast, that is the " SiDuan ", they were given to human beings when people was born. " SiDuan " is embodied in "SiXin", which are compassion, a sense of shame, humility of heart, sense of right and wrong. "SiXin" are also called the nature of the people, which contain the seeds of goodness, they are the source of the benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom. Do it naturally and then latterly they are became the human nature. That is to say, Mencius claims natural moral philosophy. The essence of the nature is against people’s subjective actions and there is no self. In the practice of moral cultivation, people have no choice by themselves, there is to say there is no place for human’s reason!However, Human’s practices are closely connected with knowledge, so is to the practice of moral cultivation. Reasonable behaviors are based on the correct knowledge. Heart of intelligence provides the guarantee for the correct knowledge, without the participation of intelligence of people’s heart, the practice of all things is meaningless, moral cultivation included! According to the thoughts of Mencius, human beings should live their moral life naturally on the basis of righteousness; The external moral ideas, the etiquette knowledge and the existence of the regulations have become a problem. Obey the law of living oneself naturally also denied the fact that the meaning of studying and inheriting the classic knowledge of Confucian. From a practical point of view, if there is no instructions, learning and the constraints of the external regulations, our society will be in chaos and battle, and more importantly, hard to stability. Obviously, theory of original goodness of human nature that Mencius advocates doesn’t really and thoroughly solve the problem.Based on this, Xunzi keenly realized the shortage and limitations of Mencius’s theory of human nature, and trying to repair it. He thought that the basis of moral cultivation should be built on the cognition; morality cultivation and knowledge are inseparable. He put the human knowledge fall into two categories, namely perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge. Perceptual knowledge becomes the real knowledge need the participation of the heart of rational. Without the right knowledge, human behaviors and activities would not be reasonable, moral culture also became a problem. In a word, the reason of heart dominated people’s knowledge and behavior. However, in Xunzi’s view, people’s heart also has defects and risks, such as self-righteous, coming into its own, loving material desires and so on. As a result, it is easy prone to bring heart confused and disorderly response to the situation. Therefore, people’s heart must to be changed, human nature needed to be changed as well. The first step in the transformation is through the way of "Xu Yi Er Jing" to make the mind in a state of vanity. The second step is to depends on the function of the heart’s knowing to instill knowledge about the benevolence and justice that saint created for individuals, this process of transformation is instruction and learning. While Mencius’s thoughts of education lay more particular stress on inspiration and enlightenment. Over time, achieve the state of heart corresponds to the Dao, finally realizes the situation of freely practicing etiquette testimonies. Then nature and instruction are unified on the logic and become two pillars in the Confucian moral cultivation system.