TIME: Mondays 11:45a-1:45p
PLACE CUNY Graduate Center Room 6494 (6th Floor)
Toggle each item below to read full details
COURSE OVERVIEW
Here’s what we’re looking at:
- The course is organized into three parts, each of roughly the same length (4-5 weeks)
- Each part explores some aspects and theories of human nature in the classical period and how it relates to dao.
- We will be looking at texts spanning multiple philosophical ‘schools of thought’
- All readings will be made available electronically.
- If you have your own editions of the primary texts below, just let me know which ones you have. In most cases they will be fine.
A detailed weekly reading schedule (including selections from the secondary literature) is forthcoming.
PART 1 - Reactive Nature
In Part 1 we focus on some accounts of human nature and psychology from two main texts: the first Outer Chapters of the Zhuangzi (an anthology of early ‘Daoist’ writings), and the Xing Zi Ming Chu (XZMC 性自命出), often translated as ‘Nature Emerges from the Decree’. This latter text, unread for millennia and only discovered in a tomb in 1993, is not only of interest on its own (as a detailed analysis of human nature and human affect/emotion) but also has important implications for the views we examine in Part 2. We will also consider some passages from the Analects (a repository of saying of Kongzi—Confucius—and his followers).
There are two aspects of human nature that we’ll explore in this first part of the course. The first is that human nature is fundamentally reactive. That is, humans are creatures with latent energies that are continuously being prompted, moved, swayed, and shaped by their immediate environments. This leads several thinkers to think deeply about how to structure dao (a set of practices, norms, rituals, etc.) so as to accommodate this fact of human nature. The second, which might be seen as a corollary or more specific application of the first, is that humans are naturally drawn to and emulate those in prestigious positions, whether these persons are virtuous or vicious. We will look at the implications of this claim, and evaluate it from a cultural evolutionary perspective.
Primary Texts
Secondary Works
PART 2 - The Ru Debate: Gaozi, Mengzi (Mencius), and Xunzi on Human Nature
In this second part of the course, we examine a disagreement concerning human nature among several early Ru 儒 thinkers. (The Ru are commonly referred to as ‘Confucians’ today.)
In the 4th century BCE, Mengzi (Mencius), in the course of a debate with Gaozi (a senior Ru), makes the seemingly novel claim that human nature is good (shàn 善). We will examine the motivations behind this claim and evaluate its plausibility—both in its context as well as from a contemporary perspective. (Mengzi’s view has inspired primatologists such as Franz de Waal and psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt.) We then turn to Xunzi, who lived a century after Mengzi and explicitly (even stridently!) attacked his claim as false. Human nature is not good; it is bad/repugnant (è 惡). Moreover, he argues that Mengzi’s view has deleterious consequences for the project of self-cultivation, as it undermines the need to consult tradition, texts, and teachers. Beyond Xunzi’s refutation of Mengzi, we will also look his ‘state of nature’ account, his theory of the origins of ritual propriety in human society, and his views concerning Heaven/Nature tian 天.
Primary Texts
Secondary Works
PART 3 - Mozi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Shi-Fei 是非 Cognition
Lastly, according to several thinkers in this period, human minds have a tendency to divide up and structure their world into things that are shì 是 (correct/right/good) and things that are fei 非 (incorrect/false/bad). Some (such as Zhuangzi) explicitly link it to the concept of xìng or nature.
For the Mohists, this tendency should be exploited in dao formation, allowing individuals to align their normative judgments along a single correct pattern and thereby reliably carve up the world into things that are shì 是 (correct/right/good) and things that are fei 非 (incorrect/false/bad). For Laozi and Zhuangzi, however, this form of cognition is pernicious—something to be overcome or undone—as it prevents us from dealing with the world (and one another) in ways that reflect its true complexity.