Xunzi’s Argument on Renxin and Daoxin

When examining the scholarly history of Shangshu (The Book of Documents), there is a considerable possibility that the Sixteen Characters mentioned in the “Dayu mo” chapter of Shangshu was fabricated by someone during the Wei-Jin period by combining sentences from Xunzi with sentences from Lunyu. Because of this, Xunzi’s theory of renxin 人心 (human nuture) and daoxin 道心 (moral nature) can be misunderstood as the origin of Zhu Xi’s theory based on the “Dayu mo.” However, there are actually significant differences between them. To Zhu Xi, the terms renxin and daoxin, as well as wei 危 (danger) and wei 微 (subtlety) represent the mind and the state of mind coexisting within one person, but to Xunzi, these terms cannot coexist as they refer to stages of cultivation. Xunzi believed that through cultivation, the inborn renxin transforms into daoxin that follows the Dao, progressing from the state of fearing the dangers of renxin (wei 危) to the state of naturally following the Dao (wei 微). Xunzi proposed ‘yi 一 (one)’ as a cultivation method for this progression, suggesting that by making the mind focused, it advances to a subtle state (jing 精). This cultivation method is fundamentally different from that of Zhu Xi’s. While arguing that human nature is evil, Xunzi developed his own theory on the formation of an ideal peroson or virtue by making a clear distinction between human nature and moral mind and rendering the cultivation theory of ‘yi’, which is quite the opposite of Zhu Xi’s.