Jessica Northcott
ERH 211X – 02

Are we as humans innately good or bad? That is a philosophical question, which was not directly addressed by Confucius in his writings in the Analects, but his writing did hint enough at his belief that we are able to draw a conclusion as to how he would answer. Mencius and Hsun-Tzu both attempted to argue that they correctly interpreted Confucius, by saying that humans are innately good and innately bad respectively. I feel that neither of them makes an argument which exactly aligns with the writings of Confucius in the Analects, but I do believe that Hsun-Tzu came closer to the original texts, and therefore, for the purposes of this essay, I will say that Hsun-Tzu and his belief that humans are innately bad is, “more in line with reason, and with the Tradition in question”. To support this conclusion, I will begin by discussing the main ideas held by Mencius (1); next, I will discuss the ideas of Hzun-Tzu (2). Following this will be a discussion as to why each person could in fact be correct (3), and I will conclude with a discussion as to why I feel Hzun-Tzu comes closest to being in line with the traditions of Confucianism (4).
1. Mencius
In this section, Mencius’ beliefs will be discussed, particularly his focus on the four virtues and how they point towards humans being innately good. Mencius believed that humans are innately good and that each human is born with four virtues: humaneness, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. He believed that distress proved humanness. He used the example of one’s reaction toward a child falling down a well to illustrate the concept. When a child falls down a well, a person would feel genuine distress and would try to rescue the child out of benevolence rather than rescuing the child for a personal gain such as wealth or fame. This also applies in a greater sense to rulers who have the duty to be benevolent. That is to say that they must examine the real world consequences of their policies so as to not enact rules or decisions that will cause distress to the governed. He believes that shame leads to righteousness. He believes that all men feel shame whether one feels shame, shares the shame of someone else, or feels shame for not feeling shame when those around them do feel it. This common shame leads to righteousness, which is a remedy to feeling shame. As a result, this unites humanity in a search for righteousness and an end to shame (Smart 316).
Mencius also believes that respect would lead to propriety and to be a man of propriety is to be respectful to all. For example, it is proper to respect and care for your elders and therefore a man of propriety will respect his elders. Because he is a man of propriety, he will in turn be respected because it would be proper to respect a man who is respectful of others. Wisdom is the knowledge of right and wrong, and most important of this knowledge is that it is right to be respectful and benevolent. A ruler who is wise will see that to rule justly would be to rule with respect and benevolence to the subjects rather than to rule in such a way as to gain personal wealth or pleasure at the expense of those beneath him or her (Smart 316).

2. Hsun-Tzu
This section will focus on the beliefs of Hsun-Tzu, who believes that human nature is innately bad. Hsun-Tzu uses the world as an example of the flawed nature of human beings. In our society, we put “Noble Knights” and good rulers up on a pedestal, and show them as the example of good men. That is to say that they are somehow different from the rest of us. Normal people act out of self-gain, and self-protection. We do what is best for us, regardless of what that means for those around us. When the noble knight or good ruler acts differently from that norm, we call them the good knight or good ruler. But they are good because they have risen above the rest of us who act out of selfish desires. Because they are good, they are given the right to rule (Stevenson 31).
The good ruler then seeks to order the rest of the people around him, and achieves this order by enacting laws and harsh punishments for breaking those laws. In other words, he forces the rest of us to be good like him. However, in the absence of the ruler, say after his death, we return to our flawed nature, and people plot and scheme how they will become the new ruler, or cease to follow the old ruler’s policies. We do not continue on acting like the good ruler in the absence of the threat of punishment for not following the rules. This shows, according to Hsun-Tzu, that we are all innately bad, because without a good ruler to guide our behavior, we revert back to a state of chaos and self-serving behavior (Stevenson 31).

3. Arguments For Each
I. Mencius
Mencius believes that we are innately good, and that we spend our lives abiding by a series of feelings, such as distress leading to greater humanity, which bring us closer to becoming some ultimate “good” person. He does not say that we are people of virtue at the time of our birth, but rather we are born with the seeds of virtue within us, that given proper nourishment, will help us flourish into the virtuous people we were born to be.
Mencius is not the only one to propose such a theory of human existence. For instance, Plato argues a similar concept in his theory of forms, in which he states that we all know what is good in the world of the forms, and then we are born into this world, and we are reminded of the forms. In particular, he theorizes the Form of the Good, which is the uninhibited, pure, form of goodness. As we become enlightened to this knowledge of the forms, and what is “good” in our knowledge of the Form of the Good, it is our duty to help others realize this enlightenment, and knowledge of what is right.
This is similar to Mencius, especially in his discussion of being proper. We are born knowing that it is proper to treat our elders with respect, and when someone sees us treating our elder respectfully, they know to treat us respectfully because we abide by what is proper in our own actions. We know and act upon what is proper, and this enlightens other people to know and then act in a similar manner. Although Plato and Mencius do not exactly line up in their beliefs, I do feel that their ideas of being born with some knowledge, and then seeking in life to perfect that knowledge are analogous concepts.
This shows that in a culture removed from Mencian China, there were others who believed in a similar set of ideas that say that humans are not born ignorant, that they are born with some innate knowledge of good, and that they strive in this life to perfect that good. This also aligns with Confucianism because one would use Confucius’ teachings to become enlightened of this innate goodness that Plato and Mencius hinted at. Through the intense studying, one would become reminded of goodness presuming they innately knew this.

II. Hsun-Tzu
Like Mencius, who had his beliefs supported by the ideas of another culture, Hsun-Tzu also finds support from abroad. The Roman Catholic Church teaches the idea of Original Sin. They teach that people were in the beginning perfect, but following the sin of Adam and Eve, a flaw was introduced to human nature, and this flaw gives us an innate desire for what is considered wrong by the Church and God. We have a propensity to lie for our own benefit, and to steal in our times of need. They say that the Church, and devotion to God brings order to this flawed nature, but without the Church, our world would descend into a state of sin, such as the towns of Sodom and Gomorra.
A more modern example of this flawed human nature is when someone looks at the Mafia, or various Drug Cartels. When there is an absence of a “Noble Knight or Good Ruler”, whether that be a ruler who has the Mandate of Heaven, or the Pope in Rome, to guide our actions, then human nature is to regress into a state of self-serving actions that are devoid of regard for the thoughts, feelings, or well being of others. Therefore supporting Confucius in that one needs to study the Confucian texts in order to learn what is proper and good.
How else does one learn to be proper? Certainly one does not expect a single text to contain every tiny detail of what to do in every situation. In addition to the Confucian texts teaching what is proper, we are also taught by the Noble Knight on how to behave. Confucius proposes the idea of the Five Relationships, which in addition to maintaining a set hierarchical and proper system which controls humans innate nature of chaos, also teaches us how to behave within the situations of our lives, thus again helping forge order out of our initial anarchy. These Five Relationships are ruler and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and finally, friend and friend (Prothero 112). Initially we are born into chaos, but the action of playing our specific role at a given time in our life, not only helps us create order for our life at the moment, but also teaches us how to behave when we eventually reach the inverse side of the relationship later in life. For example, as we go through life, we learn to act first as a child to a parent, and then from that, how to act as a parent to our own child.

III. A Question on Validity for Both Sides
Before moving on from this section and making a final declaration as to which side more closely conforms to the traditions of Confucianism and why, I would first like to discuss whether or not this argument should even have a basis to even begin. You will notice that I have placed “good” in quotation marks, and this has raised the question as to whether I am skeptical of the very idea of goodness. In fact I am. I feel that there is an idea of goodness, but that idea is subjective.
This argument between Mencius and Hsun-Tzu is based on the belief that the idea of goodness is not subjective. I believe that this is the primal flaw in both of their arguments, forcing the rest of their statements to revolve around the idea that there is one singular definition of goodness, namely, Confucius’. However, in my opinion, one would be better suited abandoning their struggle over whether we are born good or bad, and look to the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes and reevaluate whether or not we can even define good in a singular manner.
Hobbes, according to Richter, “was a materialist, not dualist, about human beings. As he saw it, we are basically machines of flesh and blood, operating according to physical laws…Hobbes’ view is that every action, including good and bad ones, is motivated by either desire or aversion (86-87).” What does this mean for good and bad? This means that what one desires is seen as good, and what one has an aversion to is seen as bad. But desire and aversion are unique to every person. Therefore the very definition of good and bad is unique to every person. Because of this, I feel there is no basis for an argument as to whether people are born inherently good or bad, because there is no way to define good or bad for another person without imposing your view of good and bad onto that person, which would in turn limit their free will and thought to decided what is good and bad. Therefore, without a non-subjective means of measuring or defining good and bad, I feel that this argument between Mencius and Hsun-Tzu is inherently baseless.

4. Conclusion
I feel that in this argument, Hsun-Tzu is more closely aligned with the beliefs of Confucianism, mainly because his belief of being innately bad agrees more with the idea of striving to obtain the Five Virtues and the idea of becoming a Junzi. The Five Virtues are human-heartedness, justice, propriety, wisdom and faithfulness. According to Confucius in the Analects, a Junzi is someone who exhibits the Five virtues, knows his social role, and performs the rituals, which traverse the Way of Heaven. The fact that Confucius sets apart a special title for someone who exhibits the Five Virtues leads me to feel that Hsun-Tzu is correct in his belief that people are innately bad, because why would you need to set apart a title for someone who exhibits the Five Virtues, if we are all innately good, and therefore everyone would exhibit the Five Virtues.
To support this idea of Confucius seeing an innately flawed human nature, one can look to Huston Smith’s writing in The World’s Religions, when he discusses the Confucian concept of Li, and states, “Its first meaning is propriety, the way things should be done. Confucius thought it unrealistic to think that people could wisely determine on their own what those ways should be. They needed models, and Confucius wanted to direct their attention to the finest models their social history offered, so all could gaze, and memorize, and duplicate” (Smith 174). Because Confucius sets apart a special class of persons, the Junzi, and then couple that with Smith’s description of the concept of Li, which states that the people need models, because he felt it was unrealistic for people to be able to determine what is proper on their own, I feel that Confucius believed that humans are innately bad. Yet because of his concept of Li, and the striving to be proper, I feel that he believed that humans do strive to correct this flawed innate nature, in a lifelong attempt of self-betterment, to become good.
I feel that Hsun-Tzu also strays slightly from Confucius’ original beliefs. Confucius believes that while people are flawed, they will pursue the good of the Five Virtues, similar to the Catholic belief that while we are born in a state of sin, through devotion to God and the Church, we strive to become good. Hsun-Tzu believes that people have a natural reluctance to seek the good, and instead act only for themselves. Therefore, I feel that neither Mencius nor Hsun-Tzu has an idea of innate human nature that is exactly aligned with the original teachings of Confucius, but I feel that Hsun-Tzu in more closely aligned because he at least believes that there is room to strive to become someone of virtue, rather than Mencius, who believes that we are all already on the way to becoming people of virtue.
Work Cited
Norden, Bryan Van. “Mencius.” Stanford University. Stanford University, 16 Oct. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Richter, Duncan. Why Be Good. Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Smart, Ninian, and Richard D. Hecht. Sacred Texts of the World: A Universal Anthology. New York: Crossroad, 1982. Print.
Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions. 50th Anniversary Ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.
Stevenson, Leslie Forster. The Study of Human Nature: A Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.