A Study On Xunzi’s View Of Gentleman

Xunzi is a master of Confucianism in the Pre-Qin Dynasty.His thought is rich in content and complete in system,in which the thought of gentleman plays an important role.The study of the thought of gentleman is more helpful to a comprehensive understanding of Xunzi’s thought.The meaning of the word "gentleman" gradually evolved from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the ideal personality pursued by Confucianism.Xunzi put forward his unique gentleman thought on this basis.For the study of Xunzi’s view of gentleman,previous discussions mostly start from the single dimension of gentleman’s moral cultivation or political practice,but from the overall perspective of the view of gentleman,there is an inevitable connection between the two.The political practice of a gentleman should be based on moral cultivation,which should aim at the final political practice.Only by unifying the two can we achieve the goal of an ideal society.Therefore,taking Xunzi as the starting point,combined with Xunzi’s social and historical environment and the gentleman thought of various schools in the Pre-Qin Dynasty,this paper combs Xunzi’s gentleman thought as a whole.It can be seen that Xunzi established his gentleman thought based on the two levels of human nature and sociality,defined the character of a gentleman from different levels,pointed out the ideal way to realize a gentleman,and emphasized the cultivation of morality through the methods of "seeking sincerity from the inside" and "seeking courtesy from the outside" and put it into political practice.Xunzi’s view of gentleman not only inherits the multiple connotation of gentleman in Confucius and Mencius,but also gives new content,which is a further improvement of Confucian thought of gentleman.After the above combing,we can further intuitively see the great value of Xunzi’s improvement of Confucian gentleman thought in the history of Chinese philosophy.It covers personality cultivation and governing the country by the world.Its contribution has important enlightenment significance to our choice of life value,contemporary civilization construction and socialist harmonious values.