The Debate On Righteous And Utility Of Confucius,Mengzi And Xunzi Of Pre-Qin

The concept of righteous has been realized before Confucius, however, it wasuntil the great time of Confucius this concept had been used and talked about. Andrighteous has been always involved with utility since it came out.When Confucius talked about righteous and utility, he never made them either-or,he always believed that righteous could never been realized without utility. Thus it isnot proper enough to designated Confucius a mild deontologist. What Confuciustalked about righteous and utility tends to be more like utilitarian theory including thepursuing of spiritual things, knowledge, morality and ritual, etc.The debate on righteous and utility had been fierce when the time went toMengzi’s period. What Mengzi talked about has a little difference from Confucius.Confucius never thought that righteous and utility could be chosen either-or. When itwent to Mengzi, it was not like that. Mengzi believed that if we did something forutility merely, righteous could not be realized, thus righteous and utility was either-or.After Confucius, Mengzi approved to do things right both in the way we did it and theaim we did it for. What’s more, Mengzi took much importance to morality, thusrighteous and utility had some conflict with each other in Mengzi’s debate. At themeantime, Mengzi attached the debate on righteous and utility to the debate onmonarchical hegemony. It had been known that Mengzi took positive attitude towardshis ideal kingdom where the king do moral things to manage himself and his country.Of course the king could never do things just for utility. Why Mengzi took differentattitude towards Confucius on the debate of righteous and utility? We could explainthis from two-side. One is probably that at the time Mengzi lived, Chan Kuo, theseven strong kingdoms were involved in rather fierce wars, therefore, every kingdomwanted to become more and more strong eagerly; and Confucianism was beingchallenged by other doctrines after Confucius died, Mengzi had to take shoulder tomake it restore the prestige. The other is probable that the Benevolence of Confuciusdeveloped to be two sides, it was the inner development of Confucianism.Xunzi advocated that whatever we did, it should be for righteous at last. At themeantime, utility could not be ignored, that is to say, righteous and utility could bechose both. Even more, righteous and utility were both to be advocated. Either we didthings for righteous merely, or we did things for utility only, were not proper.Confucius, Mengzi and Xunzi all talked about righteous and utility. In a sense,they all believed in a consistent opinion within Confucianism, and had differences indetails.The three philosopher judged Duke Huan of Qi and Kuan Chung on certainoccasions. Duke Huan of Qi and Kuan Chung were both persons that werecontroversial. Opinions revealed through their debate on this two. What’s more, thedifferences among Confucius, Mengzi and Xunzi involved the theory of humanity of theirs.This paper tries to follow the way that Zhang Xuecheng and Yu Yingshi do withtheir treaties, though it is not easy, rather to say, very difficult. Zhang and Yu are bothrather outstanding scholars, the former is a great philosopher in Qing dynasty, thelatter is distinctive in modern academic circles. However, Mengzi said that, we spokehighly of poetry of the great ones, we read their books, shouldn’t we know about theones? Shouldn’t we know about our time that we live? Thus this paper wouldrather have a try. More specific to say, this paper tries to build analysis on the historyof it, that is to say, to distinguish this debate in the period they lived and they thought.This is also the innovation point of this paper.