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Hsün Tzu on the Mind: His Attempted Synthesis of Confucianism and Taoism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Lee H. Yearley
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Abstract

Using contemporary Western philosophic ideas, this essay examines Hsün Tzu's view of the mind as both a director of action and a spectator of action. In analyzing the mind as director, Hsün Tzu argues against Mencius's idea that the mind simply extends one's natural tendencies. Hsün Tzu's presentation of the mind as spectator— an idea developed chiefly in his discussion of obsession—accepts Chuang Tzu's stress on the importance of detachment, but argues that such detachment need not necessitate withdrawal from normal action. Hsün Tzu's two views of the mind can be reconciled by examining the mind's relationship to desires and to moral judgments. That examination also leads to the conclusion that Hsün Tzu thinks moral judgments have only a conventional and not a universal basis.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , May 1980 , pp. 465 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1980

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References

1 Mencius's conception of the mind's role in self-cultivation is subtle and complex. For his notion of the mind's focusing, see Lau, D. C. trans., Mencius (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), VIA 15, VIA 17, and IVA12. On the critical idea of extension, see all of VIA but also note IA7, IIA2, IVA10, IVA12, IVB14, IVB18–19, IVB28, VIIA15–16, VIIA48, VIIB31, VIIB35, VIIB37, VIIB39.Google Scholar

2 For examples of these ideas, see Watson, Burton trans., Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 139–40, 157–63; noted hereafter as Watson/Hsün Tzu.Google Scholar

The Hsün Tzu presents various textual problems, but we can proceed with some certainty if we use only those sections that most scholars agree are by Hsün Tzu, although certain textual problems do exist even in those particular sections.

Conversations with many people have aided my work, but especially valuable were talks with my colleague, David Nivison. Francis Gramlich's work with me on section 21 and related texts was also helpful, as were the comments of members of the Berkeley Regional Seminar on Confucian Studies and the Workshop on Classical Chinese Thought at Harvard in August 1976, to whom earlier and quite different versions of this paper were presented.

3 See Tzu, Watson/Hsün, pp. 139-40, 150–52, 157–63. The best translation of wei is Legge's“factitiousness, ” but it is both arcane and clumsy.Google Scholar

4 In Mencius, see, for example, VIA10. For examples of Hsün Tzu's struggling with the problem, see See Tzu, Watson/Hsü, pp. 23, 73, 74, 151.Google Scholar At times Hsün Tzu does speak of choices among desires rather than of ideas controlling desires; see Tzu, Wztson/Hsun, pp. 139-40; Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series. Supplement no. 22: A Concordance to Hsün Tzu (cited hereafter as Harvard Index Text), 83/22/3, 4.Google Scholar

5 See Tzu, Watson/Hsün, pp. 163–64; see also pp. 15–32 and 171; in Mencius, see IIA2, IIA6.Google Scholar

6 The ideas of the unimpeded and the properly nourished in Mencius appear in Graham, A. C.,“The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s. 6, nos. 1–2 (1967): 232, 237–38.Google Scholar

7 When I refer to Chuang Tzu, I refer neither to a person nor to the entire text of the Chuang Tzu, but to a reasonably coherent set of ideas that can be found in sections 1–7.

8 See, for example, Tzu, Watson/Hsün, p. 110Google Scholar. Although I cannot discuss the point here, much other evidence exists that some form of this distinction operates in Hsün Tzu. Indeed, Hsün Tzu can be usefully viewed as a demythologizer of certain traditional religious ideas and practices.

9 Hsün Tzu examines detachment at the end of section 1 (“Encouraging Learning”) and section 22 (“Rectifying Names”). See Harvard Index Text, 3/1/46–51 and 86/22/78–83; Watson/Hsün Tzu, pp. 22–23 and 154–56.Google Scholar

10 The accompanying numbers refer to the Harvard Index Text. I cannot here defend all aspects of this breakdown, but I will note that I proceed as if the section contains no major interpolations or rearrangements of parts. It is fruitful to proceed as if the text is integral unless we have compelling evidence to the contrary. We grasp only imperfectly Hsün Tzu's notion of the logical or rhetorical progress of an argument, and our intuitive judgments as to what constitutes coherence may differ from his. Therefore we should try initially to make what we can of the section as it stands. Obviously the danger exists that the coherence I find may be witness more to my own ingenuity than to Hsün Tzu's writing.

Lau questions whether the section fits at all into the work's main thrust; see Lau, D. C., “Theories of Human Nature in Mencius and Shyuntzyy, ”Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 15 (1953): 557CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Munro takes a very different interpretive perspective; see Munro, Donald, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1969), p. 153.Google Scholar

11 See especially Watson/Hsün Tzu, p. 121;78/ 21/2, 3 with its idea of the sincere mind (ch'enghsin).

12 See especially Watson/Hsü Tzu, pp. 150–54, but see also p. 89. Hsün Tzu equivocates on various ideas of possibility (k'o); see Lau, “Theories of Human Nature in Mencius and Shyuntzyy,” 554, pp. 554–55.

13 Note my earlier discussion of the importance of ideas in obsession; that is, of the way in which language forms attitude, action, and emotion. I have been much influenced in my thinking on questions relating to Hsün Tzu's ideas on language by conversations with Chad Hansen and by his article, “Ancient Chinese Theories of Language,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 2 (1975): 245–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Obviously, however, Professor Hansen is not responsible for what his ideas trigger in others.

14 I avoid using “utilitarianism” as a label to describe Hsün Tzu's position because that word covers such a variety of subtly but importantly different positions. If we describe utilitarianism as the idea that the Tightness or wrongness of actions is determined by the goodness or badness of their consequences, my hunch is that Hsün Tzu is a rule, ideal, universalistic utilitarian in the weak sense. Unpacking the implications of that forbidding string of qualifiers is impossible here, but note that Hsün Tzu struggles with “utilitarian” formations; e.g., Watson/Hsü Tzu, pp. 150–54.

15 Watson/Hsün Tzu, p. 45; 29/9/69–71.

16 For an example of this position, see Toulmin, Stephen, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1950).Google Scholar

17 The passage on li as acosmic principle (Watson/Hsün Tzu, p. 94), and other somewhat similar passages, appear to undercut any notion that Hsün Tzu distinguishes between the conventional and the universal. These passages do not fit the main thrust of Hsün Tzu's more sophisticated thought, however, and they generally contradict the line of argument he uses in his discussion of Heaven. The passages may remain for a variety of reasons: an exoteric rhetorical flourish; a mortgage from the past that represents either an undigested part of his tradition or a youthful idea he later gave up; or of course, the ever-ready “textual interpolation“arising either from other hands or from the early works of Hsün Tzu himself.

18 The game image also leads in two other relevant directions. Games involve skill, and Hsün Tzu sees all knowledge as a learned skill, a “knowing that” to which attachment is difficult, rather than a “knowing that” to which attachment is easy. See Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1949), pp. 25–61, for a discussion of these two kinds of knowing.Google Scholar

Moreover, games are activities, not processes. A process is complete only when the goal is reached, but each step in an activity has integrity. For a discussion of this distinction see Urmson, J. O., “Aristotle on Pleasure,” in Moravcsik, J. M. E., ed., Aristotle: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), pp. 323–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar