On Xunzi Historical Thinking In Time-varying And Time-invariant

Time-varying and invariant is an important part of the historical thought. Thestudy of Xunzi’s thought about time-varying and invariant has the very importantsignificance to go deep into understand his historical and political thinking. In thispaper,I will take those notions with the meaning of a specific historical stage,forexample,“Time”、“Shi”、“Gu”、“Jin”and so on, for the main reseach object；regardthe“varying”and“invariant”as the key research question,incorporating the relatedresearch of the scholars in different eras to analyse Xunzi’s thought abouttime-varying and invariant deeply,and investigate his following later King’s advocateon this basis in the text of “Xunzi”.The full paper is divided into four main parts. Thefirst part mainly elaborates the research object and scope、the significance of the topic,research review and a description of the research idea.The second part mainly describes Xunzi’s thought about time-varying. Thissection is main through two aspects which include the socio-political activities andpersonal conduct of life、 interaction with others to carry out the preliminaryinvestigation on his thought about time-varying.In the aspect of the socio-political,Xunzi wasn’t explicit only aware of the objective socio-political changes, but alsorecognized the subjective response to the social and political changes. In the aspect ofpersonal conduct of life、interaction with others, Xunzi didn’t perceive that the eracould have a decisive influence on personal encounter, but also realized thatindividuals should be evaluated the change of the era to obtain the personal changeinitiative.The third part mainly describes Xunzi’s thought about time-invariant.“Dao”which doesn’t change with the time is the core of Xunzi’s thought abouttime-invariant， so this section is mainly through the analysis of thoseunderlying“Dao”of historical movement、 governance、 merger and military、individual conducting oneself in the world and so on which doesn’t change with the time to reveal Xunzi’s thought about time-invariant.In the aspect of historicalmovement. Xunzi thought the process of running for history that the era of goodgovernance and chaos circulated mutually at a certain period wastime-invariant.Governance in this aspect, Xunzi thought that those“Dao”includingthe“rule of Virtue”、“rule of Human-heartedness and Righteousness”、“rule of Ritesand Music”、“rule of Law”、“rule of Man”、“rule of‘Ming Fen’”、“rule of Rewards andPunishments”、 the operating mode of authoritarian monarchy and so on weretime-invariant.Mergers and military in this aspect,Xunzi pointed out that the way formergers of Virtue as well as the strategy and tactic for military of “Yi Min” weretime-invariant.The aspect of individual conducting oneself in the world,Xunzi didn’tonly believe the attitude of individual conducting oneself in the world shouldn’tchange with the time,but also expound a lot of contents related about individualconducting oneself in the world.In addition to those underlying unchanged“Dao”,Xunzi also introduced some time-invariant social phenomena and concepts.The four part describes the relation between Xunzi’s time-varying、time-invariant historical thinking and his following later King’s advocate.First of all,Xunzi advocated the change over time and fully awared of the importance for thechange over time, especially the necessity of following later king in the new situation.In this aspect, there must be significant deficiencies if we only followed the previousKing.Therefore,Xunzi proposed his following later King’s advocate.Secondly,Xunzihad a strong sense of time-invariant．There were many factors existing in the previousKing and later King both certainly under the domination of this idea. The purpose offollowing the previous King could be achievement through the later King whenfollowing the previous King directly had many difficulties therefore.Following laterKing is following the previous King’s concrete realization way and method.Theinterpretation for Xunzi’s following later King’s advocate from the perspective ofhistorical thinking could perhaps provide a certain reference for our furtherunderstanding this proposition.