Confucianism, Taoism And Human Nature And The Rule Of The Theory

This paper mainly deals with Pre-Qin Confucianists and Taoists'opinions on huˉman nature and their theories on government.Both Confucianists and Taoists base govˉernmental theories on their opinions towards human nature.Because they approach the Heaven(Tian)and the Way(Dao)differently,they hold different ideas of human naˉture,and therefore they advocate different governmental theories. As for Confucianists,Confucius pays great attention to postnatal Practice(Xi).To avoid the negative results caused by postnatal Practice,he advocates using the rapier of Benevolence(Ren)and Ceremony(Li)to govern.What he advocates is to govern both internally and externally.Mencius not only succeeds but also develops Confucius'theory.He adds ethical and moral quality to Confucius'Heaven of will.He claims that human is good by nature,and thus advocates government by Benevolence.It can be seen that Menˉcius advocates governing the outside with the inside.To be exact,he advocates adminisˉtering by human nature.However,Mencius'theory on human nature suffers from a grave defect in that he mixes up human's natural quality with social quality.Different from Mencius,Hs n-tzu believes in natural Heaven,and he believes that human is evil by nature.He makes a clear distinction between human's natural quality and social qualˉity.To restrain human's natural quality,Hs n-tzu suggests emphasizing the developˉment of human's social quality and therefore advocates the governmental theory of both Ceremony and Law(Fa). As for Taoists,both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu hold naturalism on human nature.Because of different times they live in and different opinions they hold towards the Way,Lao-tuz differs from Chuang-tzu in human nature and governmental theory.Concernˉing the Way,Lao-tzu is characterized with ontological argument of the Universe while Chuang-tzu is characterized with the pursuit of free inner spirit.Lao-tzu's naturalism on human nature is close to the theory of original goodness of human nature in that he beˉlieves human nature is originally simple and pure.Thus he advocates governing by revertˉing human nature to its original state and following the Way's spontaneous models of beˉhavior(Wuwei).On the other hand,Chuang-tzu's naturalism on human nature is close to the theory of human nature being neither good nor evil.Chuang-tzu's naturalˉism emphasizes human's free physical development,but more importantly,he emphaˉsizes totally free spiritual state,Chuang-tzu believes that things are different by nature,and hence insists that governors should let them be in order not to spoil their nature.Therefore,he advocates his ideal governmental method of sages'using"Liangxing"while opposing any form of government that has existed in history.In short,Chuang-tzu shifts from Lao-tzu's emphasis on administering a state to emphasis on self-cultivaˉtion.