Xunzi's Political Thought Research

Xunzi is the master of Confucianism at the end of the Warring States Period.His political ideas such as "the combination of etiquette and law" and "monarchy and people first" have promoted the unification of the Warring States at that time,and became the theoretical premise of the political system of the dynasties since the Qin and Han dynasties,which had a profound effect on the ancient Chinese political philosophy.This paper attempts to put Xunzi's some important political ideas first for deeply explores Xunzi's philosophical thoughts from the political system itself.This paper is divided into the following sections:The introduction mainly expounds the significance of selected topic,the dynamic reviews of related research and research methods.The first chapter mainly describes the life of Xunzi and the theoretical origin of political thoughts.Xunzi and Confucius are all pre-Qin Confucianism,so Xunzi's political thoughts are largely influenced by Confucius' thoughts.The author mainly analyzes the influence of Confucianism to Xunzi from the three aspects of"human nature","for learning" and "ceremony".The second chapter focuses on the theoretical basis of Xunzi's political philosophy thoughts.Since the Qin Dynasty,people's ontology was still in the heaven which had "personality" and held that all things of human were arranged by the heaven.The view of "distinguish between heaven and man" firstly proposed by Xunzi was undoubtedly the breakthrough of conception of nature which was accepted by society at that time,and was also a kind of the regression of humanism relative to "destiny" which was popular at that time.When people looked back to the humanism,Xunzi further illustrated human nature's evilness and falseness based on human essence.The human nature is innate simplicity,but has natural desire,and if it can not be restrained,this desire would become evil,which is the inherent foundation and logical approach of Xunzi's political philosophy thought.It can be said that human nature's evilness and falseness is the core part of political philosophy thought proposed by Xunzi.But the theory of human nature is only the inherent theory of Xunzi 's political philosophy thought,the formation and the feasibility of a political system demand the external conditions.Therefore,Xunzi put forward the "group,sub" concept.He distinguished human beings from animal through the "group,sub" to construct a complete system of social order.And then a complete thought of political philosophy was formed.The third chapter is a number of specific political content put forward by Xunzi according to his political and ideological theory.The author first starts from Xunzi's ritual theory to talk about Xunzi's attitude about the nature of ritual and law and the relationship between them to explore the inner relation of Xunzi's thought of prospering etiquettes and respecting laws.And then the author comprehensively illuminates Xunzi's some political ideas,such as "centering on the ceremony","the establishment of the monarch and minister,the people-oriented and boxing thought"and other political ideas.The fourth chapter is the influence of Xunzi 's political philosophy thoughts on later generations.Xunzi's political philosophical thought directly influenced the formation of Qin law through his apprentice,Han Fei and Li Si,and also affected the Han Dynasty's political system design trend.In this chapter,the author focuses on the far-reaching influence of his political thoughts.The fifth chapter is a summary description of the whole passage,and it points out the neatness and completeness of Xunzi's political philosophy thoughts.