Xunzi’s Yi, E, and Xing

Trying to make sense of what Xunzi on the whole can run into some pretty basic difficulties, at least in my less than knowledgeable case. The reason for this stems from a difficulty in making clear what Xunzi is up to at the most fundamental level. It’s tough to attempt more sophisticated readings of finer points when the more basic and general points are still unclear. One of them concerns Xunzi’s take on xing (human nature), whether it is bad (e) and whether yi (duty, righteousness, appropriateness) is innate. The problem: if yi is innate, it seems that xing is not e, and that puts him in bed with Mencius, a person Xunzi doesn’t want to be sleeping with.

Xunzi’s Dark Will

I find questions of motivation intriguing. How is it that some people have the ability to simply “latch on” to a goal and doggedly pursue it, whereas others either have an inability to latch on at all to a goal, or have the ability but weakly so — any number of frustrations will suffice to derail the pursuit of the goal.

Still Waiting, and Weird Baby Names

We’re still…waiting. No baby. We thought for sure we’d have a new arrival by now, but baby arrival medical science is like Aristotelean virtue ethics — you can’t demand more precision than the subject matter allows. While we’re waiting, we’re having issues with baby names. We have a firm name for a girl, if it is a girl (we don’t know the sex of the baby). We’re hung up on the name for the kid if it is a boy. We’ve solicited help from others in coming up with cool boy names, by the way, so if you have one (or some) please feel free to leave a suggestion!

However, for some people, “cool name for a baby” goes a bit too far… (click below)

Updates

For students roaming through, notice that the course pages have been pretty heavily updated in the past few days. You’ll find handouts, readings, assignments and syllabi for each course now. For others — I’m still on blog break, waiting patient for the arrival of child #2, which really could be any day (or minute) now. As I wait, I’m reading Kurtis Hagen’s The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (2007), which so far has been a pretty good book. I’ll be back to posting soon, hopefully.

Obama Needs to Fatten Up

I’m trying to hammer out a rough outline for a paper, so I’m on blog break. In the meantime, checkout this Wall Street Journal editorial on how Obama being in shape might be a political liability. It’s sad on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. It seems that all he needs to do is become one of the scooter people (those of you who know me know what I mean) and he’s a shoe-in. After all, we Americans like people who seem to be just like us, right?

Kohlberg and Confucius

I’m reading Kohlberg’s old Moral Development and Behavior (1976) for today’s virtue ethics seminar. It can be tough to re-read Kohlberg again, especially after the post-Gilligan ”Kohlberg is wrong!” and “Kohlberg is a tool of patriarchy!” memes thrown at you for so many years. As a result, I found myself not so much focusing on Kohlberg, but trying to figure out where Confucius would fit in all of this. I have some guesses. ‘

Zhu Xi and Mental Attention

One of Chu Hsi’s aphorisms in Learning to Be a Sage stuck out to me, and I’m not sure if it is the translation that seems peculiar, or if there’s an idea there that I’m not picking up on. Click below for the passage: hopefully there are a few Chu Hsi’ers out there who can help.

It’s Out…

The book is finally out. Yesterday I actually held a copy of it in my hands. It was an odd feeling, I must admit.

Hutton on Situationism

I’m re-reading Eric Hutton’s “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought” (Phil Studies, 2006) and starting to wonder…am I a situationist about Confucianism? I’m starting to wonder if I have begun to walk down this dark path. (Also, note that Alexus just put up today an excellent post on possible situationism in the Analects).

Ren and Min

Some of you may have noticed an increase in posts on “min” lately. Not surprising, I’m trying to puzzle out a subsection of a possible paper, and I still have many questions about the concept. This time, I’m wondering how legitimately we can apply Confucius’ “moralization” of ren to the treatment of min.  Depending on which way we answer the question opens or closes a lot of interpretative doors.

Situationalism and Confucius

I’ll admit it — I have a hard time getting my head around situationalism with respect to its attempt to attack the notion of character as it plays out in virtue ethics. Sometimes I have a hard time grasping what it is that they (the situationalists) are precisely arguing for, whereas at other times I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is. My worst confusion, though, is understanding how it all plays out for the Confucian. On this latest question, as I’ll discuss below, I have pretty much no idea what to say. Frustration set in.

Shun: That Kind of Guy

Last week there was considerable discussion of Mencius 7A35 in the seminar. It seemed to me that just about everyone agreed on a general interpretation of the passage. Much as the conversation was interesting (as the reading brought up important issues about Mencius), I just couldn’t convince myself that they were reading the passage right.